LANDMARKS  -  IN 
RUSSIAN-LITERATURE 

MAURICE  BARING 


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LANDMARKS    IN     RUSSIAN 
LITERATURE 


LANDMARKS  IN 
RUSSIAN   LITERATURE 


BY 

MAURICE    BARING 


NEW    YORK 

THE    MAGMILLAN    COMPANY 

1910 


r 


O 
V9 


DEDICATED 
TO 

ARTHUR   CHRISTOPHER   BENSON 


PREFACE 

THE  chapters  in  this  book  on  Tolstoy  and 
Tourgeniev,  and  those  on  Chekov  and 
Gogol  have  appeared  before.  That  on  Tolstoy 
and  Tourgeniev  in  The  Quarterly  Review  \  those 
on  Chekov  and  Gogol  in  The  New  Quarterly ;  my 
thanks  are  due  to  the  Editors  and  Proprietors 
concerned  for  their  kindness  in  allowing  me  to 
reprint  these  chapters  here. 

The  chapter  on  Russian  Characteristics  appeared 
in  St.  George's  Magazine  \  the  rest  of  the  book  is 
new.  In  writing  it  I  consulted,  besides  many 
books  and  articles  in  the  Russian  language,  the 
following : 

The  Works  of  Turgeniev.      Translated  by  Constance 

Garnett.    Fifteen  vols.    London  :  Heinemann,  1906. 
The   Complete  Works   of  Count  Tolstoy.     Translated 

and  edited  by    Leo   Wiener.      Twenty-four   vols. 

London  :  Dent,  1904-5. 
La  Roman  Russe.     By  the  Vicomte  E.  M.  de  Vogiie. 

Paris  :  Plon,  1897. 
Tolstoy    as     Man    and     Artist  :     with     an    Essay    on 

Dostoievski.     By  Dimitri  Merejkowski.     London  : 

Constable,  1902. ^ 

^  This  is  an  abridgment  of  a  larger  book  by  the  author. 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Ivan    Turgeniev :     la    Vie    et     I'CEuvre.       By    Emile 

Haumant.     Paris  :  Armand  Colin,  1906. 
The  Life   of  Tolstoy.     First  Fifty  Years.     By  Aylmer 

Maude.     London  :  Constable,  1908. 
A  Literary  History  of  Russia.     By  Prof.  A.  Bruckner. 

Edited  by   Ellis   H.    Minns.      Translated  by   H. 

Havelock.     London  and  Leipsic  :    Fisher  Unwin, 

1908. 
Realities  and  Ideals  of  Russian  Literature.     By  Prince 

Kropotkin. 
Russian  Poetry  and  Progress.      By   Mrs.  Newmarch. 

John  Lane. 

By  far  the  best  estimate  of  Tolstoy's  work  I 
have  come  across  in  England  in  the  last  few  years 
was  a  brilliant  article  published  in  the  Literary 
Supplement  of  the  Times,  I  think  in  1907,  which, 
it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  be  republished. 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  Russian  Characteristics         .  .  .        i 

II.  Realism  of  Russian  Literature  .  .      17 

III.  Gogol    and     the    Cheerfulness  of  the 

Russian  People           .           .  .  -39 

IV.  Tolstoy  and  Tourgeniev        .  .  .      n 
V.  The  Place  of  Tourgeniev      .  .  .116 

VI.  Dostoievsky         .           .           .  .  .125 

VII.  Plays  of  Anton  Tchekov       .  .  .    263- 


4; 


INTRODUCTION 

A  BOOK  dealing  with  the  literature  of  a 
foreign  country  appeals  to  a  double 
audience :  the  narrow  circle  of  people  who  are 
intimately  familiar  with  that  literature  in  its 
original  tongue,  and  the  large  public  which  is 
imperfectly  acquainted  even  with  translations  of 
some  of  its  books.  One  of  these  audiences  must 
necessarily  be  sacrificed.  For  if  you  address 
yourself  exclusively  to  the  specialists,  the  larger 
public  will  be  but  faintly  interested ;  while  if  you 
have  the  larger  public  in  view  alone,  the  narrower 
circle  of  those  who  are  familiar  with  the  language 
will  hear  nothing  from  you  which  they  do  not 
already  know  too  well.  In  the  case  of  a  literature 
such  as  Russian,  it  is  obvious  which  audience  has  the 
claim  to  the  greater  consideration  ;  but  while  this 
book  is  addressed  to  those  who  are  interested  in 
but  not  intimately  familiar  with  Russian  literature, 
I  entertain  the  hope  that  these  essays  may  not 
prove  entirely  uninteresting  to  the  closer  students 
of  Russian.  I  have  tried  to  make  a  compromise, 
and  while    especially    addressing    myself  to    the 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

majority,  not  to  lose  sight  of  the  minority 
altogether. 

The  standpoint  from  which  I  approach  Russian 
literature  is  less  that  of  the  scholar  than  of  an 
admiring  and  sympathetic  friend.  I  have  tried  to 
understand  what  the  Russians  themselves  think 
about  their  own  literature,  and  in  some  manner 
to  reflect  their  point  of  view  as  it  struck  me  either 
in  their  books  or  in  conversation  with  many  men 
and  women  of  many  classes  throughout  several 
years. 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  there  are 
two  ways  of  writing  about  a  foreign  literature : 
from  the  outside  and  from  the  inside.  Take  a 
language  like  French,  for  instance,  and  the  study 
of  French  poetry  in  particular.  Many  English 
students  of  French  poetry  seem  to  me  to  start 
from  the  point  of  view  that  although  much 
French  verse  has  many  excellent  qualities,  those 
qualities  which  are  peculiarly  French  and  which 
the  French  themselves  admire  most  are  not 
worth  admiring.  Thus  it  is  that  we  have  had 
many  excellent  critics  telling  us  that  although 
the  French  poetry  of  the  Renaissance  is  admir- 
able and  the  French  Romantic  epoch  produced 
men  of  astounding  genius,  yet  the  poets  of 
another  sort,  whom  the  French  set  up  on  a  per- 
manent pinnacle  as  models  of  classic  perfection, 
such  as  Racine  or   La  Fontaine,  are  not  poets  at 


INTRODUCTION 

all.  Some  critics  have  even  gone  further,  and  have 
maintained  that  admirable  as  the  French  language 
is  as  an  instrument  for  writing  prose,  it  cannot 
properly  be  used  as  a  vehicle  for  writing  poetry,  and 
that  French  poetry  cannot  be  considered  as  being 
in  the  same  category  or  on  the  same  footing  as 
the  verse  of  other  nations.  This  is  what  I  call  the 
outside  view,  and  I  am  not  only  not  persuaded 
of  its  truth,  but  I  am  convinced  that  it  is  false, 
for  two  reasons  : — 

First,  because  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the 
natives  of  a  country  must  be  the  best  judges  of 
their  own  tongue  and  of  its  literature,  and  that 
foreign  critics,  however  acute,  may  fail  to  ap- 
preciate certain  shades  of  meaning  and  sound 
which  particularly  appeal  to  the  native — for 
instance,  I  am  sure  it  is  more  difficult  for  a 
foreigner  to  appreciate  the  music  of  Milton's 
diction  than  for  an  Englishman.  Secondly,  since 
I  learnt  French  at  the  same  time  as  I  learnt 
English,  and  became  familiar  with  French  verse 
long  before  I  was  introduced  to  the  works  of 
English  poets,  from  my  childhood  up  to  the 
present  day  French  poetry  has  seemed  to  me  to 
be  just  as  beautiful  as  the  poetry  of  any  other 
country,  and  the  verse  of  Racine  as  musical  as 
that  of  Milton.  I  have,  moreover,  sometimes 
suspected  that  the  severe  sentences  I  have  seen 
passed  on  the   French  classics  by  English  critics 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

were  perhaps  due  to  imperfect  familiarity  with 
the  language  in  question,  and  that  it  even  seemed 
possible  that  in  condemning  French  verse  they 
were  ignorant  of  the  French  laws  of  metre  and 
scansion ;  such  ignorance  would  certainly  prove  a 
serious  obstacle  to  proper  appreciation. 

This  digression  is  to  make  clear  what  I  mean 
when  I  say  that  I  have  tried  to  approach  my 
subject  from  the  inside ;  that  is  to  say,  I  have 
tried  to  put  myself  into  the  skin  of  a  Russian, 
and  to  look  at  the  literature  of  Russia  with  his 
eyes,  and  then  to  explain  to  my  fellow-country- 
men as  clearly  as  possible  what  I  have  seen. 
I  do  not  say  I  have  succeeded,  but  I  have 
been  greatly  encouraged  in  the  task  by  having 
received  appreciative  thanks  for  my  former  efforts 
in  this  direction  from  Russians  who  are,  in  my 
opinion,  the  only  critics  competent  to  judge 
whether  what  I  have  written  about  their  people 
and  their  books  hits  the  mark  or  not. 

One  of  the  great  difficulties  in  writing  studies 
of  various  Russian  writers  is  the  paradoxical  thread 
that  runs  through  the  Russian  character.  Russia 
is  the  land  of  paradoxes.  The  Russian  character 
and  temperament  are  baffling,  owing  to  the  para- 
doxical elements  which  are  found  united  in  them. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  a  series  of  studies  deal- 
ing with  different  aspects  of  the  Russian  character 
often    have    the  appearance  of  being  a  series  of 


INTRODUCTION 

contradictory  statements.  I  have  therefore  in  the 
first  chapter  of  this  book  stated  what  I  consider 
to  be  the  chief  paradoxical  elements  of  the 
Russian  character.  It  is  the  conflicting  nature 
of  these  elements  which  accounts  for  the  seem- 
ingly contradictory  qualities  that  we  meet  with 
in  Russian  literature.  For  instance,  there  is  a 
passive  element  in  the  Russian  nature ;  there 
is  also  something  unbridled,  a  spirit  which  breaks 
all  bounds  of  self-control  and  runs  riot ;  and  there 
is  also  a  stubborn  element,  a  tough  obstinacy. 
The  result  is  that  at  one  moment  one  is  pointing 
out  the  matter-of-fact  side  of  the  Russian  genius 
which  clings  to  the  earth  and  abhors  extrava- 
gance ;  and  at  another  time  one  is  discoursing 
on  the  passion  certain  Russian  novelists  have  for 
making  their  characters  wallow  in  abstract  dis- 
cussions ;  or,  again,  the  cheerfulness  of  Gogol  has 
to  be  reconciled  with  the  "  inspissated  gloom  "  of 
certain  other  writers.  All  this  makes  it  easy  for  a 
critic  to  bring  the  charge  of  inconsistency  against 
a  student  whose  object  is  to  provide  certain  side- 
lights on  certain  striking  examples,  rather  than  a 
comprehensive  view  of  the  whole,  a  task  which 
is  beyond  the  scope  and  powers  of  the  present 
writer. 

The  student  of  Russian  literature  who  wishes 
for  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  whole  of  Russian 
literature    and    of    its    historic    significance     and 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

development,  cannot  do  better  than  read  Pro- 
fessor Bruckner's  solid  and  brilliant  Literary 
History  of  Russia,  which  is  admirably  translated 
into  English. 

The  object  of  my  book  is  to  interest  the  reader 
in  Russia  and  Russian  literature,  and  to  enable 
him  to  make  up  his  mind  as  to  whether  he  wishes 
to  seek  after  a  more  intimate  knowledge  of  the 
subject. 

The  authors  whose  work  forms  the  subject  of 
this  book  belong  to  the  period  which  began  in 
the  fifties  and  ended  before  the  Russo-Japanese 
War.  The  work  of  Tchekov  represents  the  close 
of  that  epoch  which  began  with  Gogol.  After 
Tchekov  the  dawn  of  a  new  era  was  marked  by 
the  startling  advent  of  Maxim  Gorky  into  Russian 
literature.  Then  came  the  war,  and  with  it  a 
torrent  of  new  writers,  of  new  thoughts,  of  new 
schools,  of  new  theories  of  art.  The  most  remark- 
able of  these  writers  is  no  doubt  Andreev ;  but 
in  order  to  discuss  his  work  as  well  as  that  of 
other  writers  who  followed  in  his  train,  it  would 
be  necessary  to  write  another  book.  The  student 
of  Russian  literature  will  notice  that  I  have 
omitted  many  Russian  authors  who  are  well 
known  in  the  epoch  which  I  have  chosen.  I 
have  omitted  them  for  reasons  which  I  have 
already  stated  at  the  beginning  of  this  Intro- 
duction, namely,  that  there  is  not  in  England  a 


INTRODUCTION 

large  enough  circle  of  readers  interested  in  Russian 
literature  to  the  extent  of  wishing  to  read  about 
its  less  well-known  writers.  I  think  the  authors 
I  have  chosen  are  typical  of  the  generations  they 
represent,  and  I  hope  that  this  book  may  have 
the  effect  of  leading  readers  from  books  about 
Russia  and  Russian  literature,  to  the  country 
itself  and  its  books,  so  that  they  may  be  able 
to  see  with  their  own  eyes  and  to  correct  the 
impressions  which  they  have  received  second- 
hand. 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN 
LITERATURE 

CHAPTER    I 
RUSSIAN  CHARACTERISTICS 

THE  difficulty  in  explaining  anything  to  do 
with  Russia  to  an  English  public  is  that 
confusion  is  likely  to  arise  owing  to  the  terms 
used  being  misunderstood.  For  instance,  if  one 
describes  a  Russian  officer,  a  Russian  bureaucrat, 
a  Russian  public  servant,  or  a  Russian  school- 
master, the  reader  involuntarily  makes  a  mental 
comparison  with  corresponding  people  in  his  own 
country,  or  in  other  European  countries  where  he 
has  travelled.  He  necessarily  fails  to  remember 
that  there  are  certain  vital  differences  between 
Russians  and  people  of  other  countries,  which 
affect  the  whole  question,  and  which  make  the 
Russian  totally  different  from  the  corresponding 
Englishman.     I  wish  before  approaching  the  work 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

of  Russian  writers,  to  sketch  a  few  of  the  main 
characteristics  which  He  at  the  root  of  the  Russian 
temperament  by  which  Russian  Hterature  is  pro- 
foundly affected. 

The   principal    fact  which   has   struck   me  with 
regard  to  the  Russian  character,  is  a  characteristic 
which  was  once  summed  up  by  Professor  Milioukov 
thus :  "  A  Russian,"  he  said,  "  lacks  the  cement  of 
hypocrisy."      This    cement,   which    plays   so   im- 
portant a  part  in  English  public  and  private  life, 
is  totally  lacking  in  the  Russian  character.     The 
Russian    character    is    plastic;    the   Russian   can 
understand  everything.     You  can  mould  him  any 
way  you   please.     He   is   like   wet   clay,  yielding 
and  malleable  ;   he  is  passive ;  he  bows  his  head 
and  gives  in  before  the   decrees  of  Fate  and  of 
Providence.     At    the   same   time,  it   would   be   a 
mistake  to  say  that  this  is  altogether  a  sign  of 
weakness.     There  is  a  kind  of  toughness  in  the 
Russian  character,  an  irreducible  obstinacy  which 
makes     for     strength ;     otherwise     the     Russian 
Empire  would  not  exist.     But  where  the  want  of 
the  cement  of  hypocrisy  is  most  noticeable,  is  in 
the  personal   relations  of  Russians  towards  their 
fellow-creatures.     They  do  not  in   the  least  mind 
openly  confessing  things  of  which  people  in  other 
countries  are  ashamed ;  they  do  not  mind  admit- 
ting  to   dishonesty,   immorality,   or  cowardice,   if 
they  happen  to  feel  that  they  are  saturated  with 

2 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTERISTICS 

these  defects;  and  they  feel  that  their  fellow- 
creatures  will  not  think  the  worse  of  them  on  this 
account,  because  they  know  that  their  fellow- 
creatures  will  understand.  The  astounding  in- 
dulgence of  the  Russians  arises  out  of  this  infinite 
capacity  for  understanding. 

Another  point:  This  absence  of  hypocrisy 
causes  them  to  have  an  impatience  of  cant  and 
of  convention.  They  will  constantly  say  :  "  Why 
not  ? "  They  will  not  recognise  the  necessity 
of  drawing  the  line  somewhere,  they  will  not 
accept  as  something  binding  the  conventional 
morality  and  the  artificial  rules  of  conduct  which 
knit  together  our  society  with  a  bond  of  steel. 
They  may  admit  the  expediency  of  social  laws, 
but  they  will  never  prate  of  the  laws  of  any  society 
being  divine ;  they  will  merely  admit  that  they 
are  convenient.  Therefore,  if  we  go  to  the  root 
of  this  matter,  it  comes  to  this :  that  the  Russians 
are  more  broadly  and  widely  human  than  the 
people  of  other  European  or  Eastern  countries, 
and,  being  more  human,  their  capacity  of  under- 
standing is  greater,  for  their  extraordinary  quick- 
ness of  apprehension  comes  from  the  heart  rather 
than  from  the  head.  They  are  the  most  humane 
and  the  most  naturally  kind  of  all  the  peoples  of 
Europe,  or,  to  put  it  differently  and  perhaps  more 
accurately,  I  should  say  that  there  is  more 
humanity  and  more  kindness  in  Russia  than  in 

3 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

any  other  European  country.  This  may  startle 
the  reader;  he  may  think  of  the  lurid  accounts 
in  the  newspapers  of  massacres,  brutal  treatment 
of  prisoners,  and  various  things  of  this  kind,  and 
be  inclined  to  doubt  my  statement.  As  long  as 
the  world  exists  there  will  always  be  a  certain 
amount  of  cruelty  in  the  conduct  of  human  beings. 
My  point  is  this :  that  there  is  less  in  Russia 
than  in  other  countries,  but  the  trouble  up  to 
the  last  two  years  has  been  that  all  excesses 
of  any  kind  on  the  part  of  officials  were  un- 
checked and  uncontrolled.  Therefore,  if  any  man 
who  had  any  authority  over  any  other  man 
happened  to  be  brutal,  his  brutality  had  a  far 
wider  scope  and  far  richer  opportunities  than  that 
of  a  corresponding  overseer  in  another  country. 

During  the  last  three  years  Russia  has  been 
undergoing  a  violent  evolutionary  process  of 
change,  what  in  other  countries  has  been  called  a 
revolution  ;  but  compared  with  similar  phases  in 
other  countries,  and  taking  into  consideration  the 
size  of  the  Russian  Empire,  and  the  various 
nationalities  which  it  contains,  I  maintain  that 
the  proportion  of  excesses  has  been  comparatively 
less.  There  are  other  factors  in  the  question 
which  should  also  be  borne  in  mind ;  firstly,  that 
politically  Russia  is  about  a  century  behind  other 
European  countries,  and  the  second  is  that 
Russians  accept  the  fact  that  a  man  who  does 

4 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTERISTICS 

wrong  deserves  punishment,  with  a  kind  of 
Oriental  fatality,  although  the  pity  which  is  in- 
herent in  them  causes  them  to  have  a  horror  of 
capital  punishment. 

Now,  let  us  take  the  first  question,  and  just 
imagine  for  a  moment  what  the  treatment  of  the 
poor  would  be  in  England  were  there  no  such 
thing  as  a  habeas  corpus.  Imagine  what  the 
position  of  the  police  would  be,  if  it  held  a 
position  of  arbitrary  dominion  ;  if  nobody  were 
responsible ;  if  any  policeman  could  do  what  he 
chose,  with  no  further  responsibility  than  that 
towards  his  superior  officers.  I  do  not  hesitate 
to  say  that  were  such  a  state  of  things  to  exist 
in  England,  the  position  of  the  poor  would  be 
intolerable.  Now,  the  position  of  the  poor  in 
Russia  is  not  intolerable ;  it  is  bad,  owing  to  the 
evils  inseparable  from  poverty,  drink,  and  the 
want  of  control  enjoyed  by  public  servants.  But 
it  is  not  intolerable.  Were  it  intolerable,  the 
whole  of  the  Russian  poor,  who  number  ninety 
millions,  would  have  long  ago  risen  to  a  man. 
They  have  not  done  so  because  their  position  is 
not  intolerable ;  and  the  reason  of  this  is,  that  the 
evils  to  which  I  have  alluded  are  to  a  certain 
extent  mitigated  by  the  good-nature  and  kindness 
inherent  in  the  Russian  temperament,  instead  of 
being  aggravated  by  an  innate  brutality  and  cruelty 
such  as  we  meet  with  in  Latin  and  other  races. 

5 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Again,  closely  connected  with  any  political 
system  which  is  backward,  you  will  always  find 
in  any  country  a  certain  brutality  in  the  matter  of 
punishments.  Perhaps  the  cause  of  this — which 
is  the  reason  why  torture  was  employed  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  why  it  is  employed  in  China 
at  the  present  day — is  that  only  a  small  per- 
centage of  the  criminal  classes  are  ever  arrested  ; 
therefore  when  a  criminal  is  caught,  his  treatment 
is  often  unduly  severe.  If  you  read,  for  instance, 
the  sentences  of  corporal  punishment,  etc.,  which 
were  passed  in  England  in  the  eighteenth  century 
by  county  judges,  or  of  the  punishments  which 
were  the  rule  in  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  army 
in  the  Peninsular  War,  they  will  make  your  hair 
stand  on  end  by  their  incredible  brutality ;  and 
England  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  politic- 
ally more  advanced  than  Russia  is  at  the  present 
day. 

With  regard  to  the  second  point,  the  attitude 
of  Russians  towards  the  question  of  punishments 
displays  a  curious  blend  of  opinion.  While  they 
are  more  indulgent  than  any  other  people  when 
certain  vices  and  defects  are  concerned,  they  are 
ruthless  in  enforcing  and  accepting  the  necessity 
of  punishment  in  the  case  of  certain  other  criminal 
offences.  For  instance,  they  are  completely  indul- 
gent with  regard  to  any  moral  delinquencies,  but 
unswervingly  stern  in  certain  other  matters  ;  and 

6 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTERISTICS 

although  they  would  often  be  inclined  to  let  off  a 
criminal,  saying  :  "  Why  should  he  be  punished  ?  " 
at  the  same  time  if  he  is  punished,  and  severely 
punished,  they  will  accept  the  matter  as  a  part 
of  the  inevitable  system  that  governs  the  world. 
On  the  other  hand,  they  are  indulgent  and 
tolerant  where  moral  delinquencies  which  affect 
the  man  himself  and  not  the  community  are 
concerned  ;  that  is  to  say,  they  will  not  mind 
how  often  or  how  violently  a  man  gets  drunk, 
because  the  matter  affects  only  himself;  but  they 
will  bitterly  resent  a  man  stealing  horses,  because 
thereby  the  whole  community  is  affected. 

This  attitude  of  mind  is  reflected  in  the 
Russian  Code  of  Laws.  The  Russian  Penal  Code, 
as  M.  Leroy-Beaulieu  points  out  in  his  classic 
book  on  Russia,  is  the  most  lenient  in  Europe. 
But  the  trouble  is,  as  the  Liberal  members  of  the 
Duma  are  constantly  repeating,  not  that  the  laws 
in  Russia  are  bad,  but  that  they  are  overridden 
by  the  arbitrary  conduct  of  individual  officials. 
However,  I  do  not  wish  in  this  article  to  dwell 
on  the  causes  of  political  discontent  in  Russia, 
or  on  the  evils  of  the  bureaucratic  regime.  My 
object  is  simply  to  point  out  certain  character- 
istics of  the  Russian  race,  and  one  of  these 
characteristics  is  the  leniency  of  the  punishment 
laid  down  by  law  for  offences  which  in  other 
countries  are  dealt  with  drastically  and  severely  ; 

7 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

murder,  for  instance.  Capital  punishment  was 
abolished  in  Russia  as  long  ago  as  1753  by  the 
Empress  Elizabeth  ;  corporal  punishment  subsisted 
only  among  the  peasants,  administered  by  them- 
selves (and  not  by  a  magistrate)  according  to  their 
own  local  administration,  until  it  was  abolished 
by  the  present  Emperor  in  1904.  So  that  until 
the  revolutionary  movement  began,  cases  of  capital 
punishment,  which  only  occurred  in  virtue  of 
martial  law,  were  rare,  and  from  1866  to  1903 
only  114  men  suffered  the  penalty  of  death 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  Russian  Empire, 
including  the  outlying  districts  such  as  Caucasus, 
Transbaikalia,  and  Turkestan  ;  ^  and  even  at  the 
present  moment,  when  the  country  is  still  practi- 
cally governed  by  martial  law,  which  was 
established  in  order  to  cope  with  the  revolu- 
tionary movement,  you  can  in  Russia  kill  a 
man  and  only  receive  a  few  years'  imprison- 
ment. It  is  the  contrast  of  the  lenient  treatment 
meted  out  to  non-political  prisoners  with  the 
severity  exercised  towards  political  offenders 
which  strikes  the  Russian  politician  to-day,  and  it 
is  of  this  contradiction  that  he  so  bitterly  com- 
plains. The  fact,  nevertheless,  remains — in  spite 
of  the  cases,  however  numerous,  which  arose  out 
of  the  extraordinary  situation  created  by  the 
revolutionary    movement,    that    the    sentence    of 

^  See  Tagantseff,  Russian  Criminal  Law. 

8 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTERISTICS 

death,  meted  out  by  the  judicial  court,  is  in  itself 
abhorrent  to  the  Russian  character. 

I  will  now  give  a  few  minor  instances  illus- 
trating the  indulgent  attitude  of  the  Russian 
character  towards  certain  moral  delinquencies. 
In  a  regiment  which  I  came  across  in  Manchuria 
during  the  war  there  were  two  men ;  one  was 
conscientious,  brave  to  the  verge  of  heroism,  self- 
sacrificing,  punctilious  in  the  performance  of  his 
duty,  and  exacting  in  the  demands  he  made  on 
others  as  to  the  fulfilment  of  theirs,  untiringly 
energetic,  competent  in  every  way,  but  severe  and 
uncompromising.  There  was  another  man  who  was 
incurably  lax  in  the  performance  of  his  duty,  not 
scrupulously  honest  where  the  Government  money 
was  concerned,  incompetent,  but  as  kind  as  a  human 
being  can  be.  I  once  heard  a  Russian  doctor 
who  was  attached  to  this  regiment  discussing  and 
comparing  the  characters  of  the  two  men,  and, 
after  weighing  the  pros  and  cons,  he  concluded 
that  as  a  man  the  latter  was  superior.  Dis- 
honesty in  dealings  with  the  public  money  seemed 
to  him  an  absolutely  trifling  fault.  The  unswerv- 
ing performance  of  duty,  and  all  the  great  military 
qualities  which  he  noted  in  the  former,  did  not 
seem  to  him  to  count  in  the  balance  against  the 
great  kindness  of  heart  possessed  by  the  latter ; 
and  most  of  the  officers  agreed  with  him.  It 
never  seemed  to  occur  to  these  men  that  any  one 

9 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

set  of  qualities,  such  as  efficiency,  conscientious- 
ness, or  honesty,  were  more  indispensable,  or  in 
any  way  superior  to  any  other  set  of  qualities. 
They  just  noticed  the  absence  of  them  in  others, 
or,  as  often  happened,  in  themselves,  and  thought 
they  were  amply  compensated  for  by  the  presence 
of  other  qualities,  such  as  good-nature  or  amiability. 
And  one  notices  in  Russian  literature  that  authors 
such  as  Dostoievsky  are  not  content  with  showing 
us  the  redeeming  points  of  a  merely  bad  character, 
that  is  to  say,  of  a  man  fundamentally  good,  but 
who  indulges  in  vice  or  in  crime ;  but  they  will 
take  pleasure  in  showing  you  the  redeeming  points 
of  a  character  which  at  first  sight  appears  to  be 
radically  mean  and  utterly  despicable.  The  aim 
of  these  authors  seems  to  be  to  insist  that,  just  as 
nobody  is  indispensable,  so  nobody  is  superfluous. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  superfluous  man ;  and 
any  man,  however  worthless,  miserable,  despicable 
and  mean  he  may  seem  to  be,  has  just  as  much 
right  to  be  understood  as  any  one  else ;  and  they 
show  that,  when  he  is  understood,  he  is  not,  taking 
him  as  a  whole,  any  worse  than  his  fellow-creatures. 
Another  characteristic  which  strikes  one  in 
Russian  literature,  and  still  more  in  Russian  life, 
especially  if  one  has  mingled  in  the  lower  classes, 
is  the  very  deeply  rooted  sense  of  pity  which  the 
Russians  possess.  An  Englishman  who  is  lame, 
and  whom  I  met  in  Russia,  told  me  that  he  had 

10 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTERISTICS 

experienced  there  a  treatment  such  as  he  had 
never  met  before  in  any  other  country.  The 
people,  and  especially  the  poor,  noticed  his  lame- 
ness, and,  guessing  what  would  be  difficult  for  him 
to  do,  came  to  his  aid  and  helped  him. 

In  the  streets  of  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg 
you  rarely  see  beggars  beg  in  vain  ;  and  I  have 
observed,  travelling  third  class  in  trains  and 
in  steamers,  that  when  the  poor  came  to  beg 
bread  for  food  off  the  poor,  they  were  never  sent 
empty  away.  During  the  war  I  always  found 
the  soldiers  ready  to  give  me  food,  however  little 
they  had  for  themselves,  in  circumstances  when 
they  would  have  been  quite  justified  in  sending 
me  about  my  business  as  a  pestilential  nuisance 
and  camp-follower.  It  is  impossible  for  a  man  to 
starve  in  Russia.  He  is  perfectly  certain  to  find 
some  one  who  will  give  him  food  for  the  asking. 
In  Siberia  the  peasants  in  the  villages  put  bread 
on  their  window-sills,  in  case  any  fugitive  prisoners 
should  be  passing  by.  This  fundamental  good- 
ness of  heart  is  the  most  important  fact  in  the 
Russian  nature;  it,  and  the  expression  of  it  in 
their  literature,  is  the  greatest  contribution  which 
they  have  made  to  the  history  of  the  world. 
It  is  probably  the  cause  of  all  their  weak- 
ness. For  the  defects  indispensable  to  such 
qualities  are  slackness,  and  the  impossibility  of 
conceiving    self-discipline    to    be   a   necessity,   or 

1 1 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

of  recognising  the  conventional  rules  and  pre- 
judices which  make  for  solidity,  and  which  are, 
as  Professor  Milioukov  said,  as  cement  is  to  a 
building. 

The  result  of  the  absence  of  this  hard  and 
binding  cement  of  prejudice  and  discipline  is  that 
it  is  very  difficult  to  attain  a  standard  of  efficiency 
in  matters  where  efficiency  is  indispensable.  For 
instance,  in  war.  In  a  regiment  with  which  I 
lived  for  a  time  during  the  war  there  was  a 
young  officer  who  absolutely  insisted  on  the 
maintenance  of  a  high  standard  of  efficiency. 
He  insisted  on  his  orders  being  carried  out  to 
the  letter ;  his  fellow-officers  thought  he  was 
rather  mad.  One  day  we  had  arrived  in  a  village, 
and  one  of  the  younger  officers  had  ordered  the 
horses  to  be  put  up  in  the  yard  facing  the  house 
in  which  we  were  to  live.  Presently  the  officer 
to  whom  I  have  alluded  arrived,  and  ordered  the 
horses  to  be  taken  out  and  put  into  a  separate 
yard,  as  he  considered  the  arrangement  which  he 
found  on  his  arrival  to  be  insanitary — which  it 
was.  He  went  away,  and  the  younger  officer  did 
not  dream  of  carrying  out  his  order. 

"  What  is  the  use  ?  "  he  said,  "  the  horses  may 
just   as  well  stay  where  they  are." 

They  considered  this  man  to  be  indulging 
in  an  unnecessary  pose,  but  he  was  not,  ac- 
cording  to     our    ideas,  in   the    least   a  formalist 

12 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTERISTICS 

or  a  lover  of  red  tape ;  he  merely  insisted 
on  what  he  considered  to  be  an  irreducible 
minimum  of  discipline,  the  result  being  that  he 
was  a  square  peg  in  a  round  hole.  Moreover, 
when  people  committed,  or  commit  (and  this  is 
true  in  any  department  of  public  life  in  Russia), 
a  glaring  offence,  or  leave  undone  an  important 
part  of  their  duty,  it  is  very  rare  that  they 
are  dealt  with  drastically ;  they  are  generally 
threatened  with  punishment  which  ends  in 
platonic  censure.  And  this  fact,  combined  with 
a  bureaucratic  system,  has  dangerous  results,  for 
the  official  often  steps  beyond  the  limits  of  his 
duty  and  takes  upon  himself  to  commit  lawless 
acts,  and  to  exercise  unlawful  and  arbitrary 
functions,  knowing  perfectly  well  that  he  can  do 
so  with  impunity,  and  that  he  will  not  be  punished. 
And  one  of  the  proofs  that  a  new  era  is  now 
beginning  in  Russia  is  a  series  of  phenomena 
never  before  witnessed,  and  which  have  occurred 
not  long  ago — namely,  the  punishment  and  dis- 
missal of  guilty  officials,  such  as,  for  instance,  that 
of  Gurko,  who  was  dismissed  from  his  post  in  the 
Government  for  having  been  responsible  for  certain 
dishonest  dealings  in  the  matter  of  the  Famine 
Relief. 

Of  course  such  indulgence,  or  rather  the  slack- 
ness resulting  from  it,  is  not  universal.  Otherwise 
the  whole  country  would  go  to  pieces.     And  yet  so 

13 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

far  from  going  to  pieces,  even  through  a  revolution 
things  jogged  on  somehow  or  other.  For  against 
every  square  yard  of  slackness  there  is  generally  a 
square  inch  of  exceptional  capacity,  and  a  square 
foot  of  dogged  efficiency,  and  thus  the  balance  is 
restored.  The  incompetency  of  a  Stoessel,  and  a 
host  of  others,  is  counterbalanced  not  only  by  the 
brilliant  energy  of  a  Kondratenko,  but  by  the 
hard  work  of  thousands  of  unknown  men.  And 
this  is  true  throughout  all  public  life  in  Russia. 
At  the  same  time,  the  happy-go-lucky  element, 
the  feeling  of  "  What  does  it  matter  ? "  of  what 
they  call  nichevo,  is  the  preponderating  quality; 
and  it  is  only  so  far  counterbalanced  by  sterner 
quaHties  as  to  make  the  machine  go  on.  This 
accounts  also  for  the  apparent  weakness  of  the 
revolutionary  element  in  Russia.  The  ranks  of 
these  people,  which  at  one  moment  appear  to  be 
so  formidable,  at  the  next  moment  seem  to  have 
scattered  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven.  They 
appear  to  give  in  and  to  accept,  to  submit  and  be 
resigned  to  fate.  But  there  is  nevertheless  an 
undying  passive  resistance ;  and  at  the  bottom  of 
the  Russian  character,  whether  that  character  be 
employed  in  revolutionary  or  in  other  channels, 
there  is  an  obstinate  grit  of  resistance.  Again,  one 
is  met  in  Russian  history,  from  the  days  of  Peter 
the  Great  down  to  the  present  day,  with  isolated 
instances  of  exceptional  energy  and  of  powers  of 

14 


RUSSIAN  CHARACTERISTICS 

organisation,  such  as  Souvorov,  Skobelieff,  Tod- 
teleben,  Kondratenko,  Kilkov,  and,  to  take  a  less 
known  instance,  Kroustalieff  (who  played  a  lead- 
ing part  in  organising  the  working  classes  during 
the  great  strike  in  1905). 

The  way  in  which  troops  were  poured  into 
Manchuria  during  the  war  across  a  single  line, 
which  was  due  to  the  brilliant  organisation  of 
Prince  Kilkov,  is  in  itself  a  signal  instance  of 
organisation  and  energy  in  the  face  of  great 
material  difficulties.  The  station  at  Liaoyang 
was  during  the  war  under  the  command  of  a  man 
whose  name  I  have  forgotten,  but  who  showed 
the  same  qualities  of  energy  and  resource.  On 
the  day  Liaoyang  was  evacuated,  and  while  the 
station  was  being  shelled,  he  managed  to  get  off 
every  train  safely,  and  to  leave  nothing  behind. 
There  were  many  such  instances  which  are  at  present 
little  know^n,  to  be  set  against  the  incompetence 
and  mismanagement  of  which  one  hears  so  much. 

It  is  perhaps  this  blend  of  opposite  qualities, 
this  mixture  of  softness  and  slackness  and  happy- 
go-lucky  insouciance  (all  of  which  qualities  make 
a  thing  as  pliant  as  putty  and  as  yielding  as 
dough)  with  the  infinite  capacity  for  taking  pains, 
and  the  inspiring  energy  and  undefeated  patience 
in  the  face  of  seemingly  insuperable  obstacles, 
which  makes  the  Russian  character  difficult  to 
understand.     You  have,  on  the  one  hand,  the  man 

15 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

who  bows  his  head  before  an  obstacle  and  says 
that  it  does  not  after  all  matter  very  much ;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  man  who  with  a  few  straws 
succeeds  in  making  a  great  palace  of  bricks. 
Peter  the  Great  was  just  such  a  man,  and  Souvorov 
and  Kondratenko  were  the  same  in  kind,  al- 
though less  in  degree.  And  again,  you  have  the 
third  type,  the  man  who,  though  utterly  defeated, 
and  apparently  completely  submissive,  persists  in 
resisting — the  passive  resister  whose  obstinacy  is 
unlimited,  and  whose  influence  in  matters  such  as 
the  revolutionary  propaganda  is  incalculable. 

It  has  been  constantly  said  that  Russia  is  the 
land  of  paradoxes,  and  there  is  perhaps  no  greater 
paradox  than  the  mixture  in  the  Russian  character 
of  obstinacy  and  weakness,  and  the  fact  that  the 
Russian  is  sometimes  inclined  to  throw  up  the 
sponge  instantly,  while  at  others  he  becomes  him- 
self a  tough  sponge,  which,  although  pulled  this 
way  and  that,  is  never  pulled  to  pieces.  He  is 
undefeated  and  indefatigable  in  spite  of  enormous 
odds,  and  thus  we  are  confronted  in  Russian 
history  with  men  as  energetic  as  Peter  the  Great, 
and  as  slack  as  Alexeieff  the  Viceroy. 

People  talk  of  the  waste  of  Providence  in  never 
making  a  ruby  without  a  flaw,  but  is  it  not  rather 
the  result  of  an  admirable  economy,  which  never 
deals  out  a  portion  of  coffee  without  a  certain 
admixture  of  chicory  ? 

i6 


CHAPTER   II 
REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

THE  moment  a  writer  nowadays  mentions 
the  word  "  realism  "  he  risks  the  danger  of 
being  told  that  he  is  a  disciple  of  a  particular 
school,  and  that  he  is  bent  on  propagating  a 
peculiar  and  exclusive  theory  of  art.  If,  however, 
Russian  literature  is  to  be  discussed  at  all,  the 
word  "  realism  "  cannot  be  avoided.  So  it  will  be 
as  well  to  explain  immediately  and  clearly  what  I 
mean  when  I  assert  that  the  main  feature  of  both 
Russian  prose  and  Russian  verse  is  its  closeness 
to  nature,  its  love  of  reality,  which  for  want  of 
a  better  word  one  can  only  call  realism.  When 
the  word  "  realism  "  is  employed  with  regard  to 
literature,  it  gives  rise  to  two  quite  separate  mis- 
understandings :  this  is  unavoidable,  because  the 
word  has  been  used  to  denote  special  schools  and 
theories  of  art  which  have  made  a  great  deal  of 
noise  both  in  France  and  England  and  elsewhere. 
The  first  misunderstanding  arises  from  the 
use  of  the  word  by  a  certain  French  school  of 
novelists  who  aimed  at  writing  scientific  novels 
B  17 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

in  which  the  reader  should  be  given  slices 
of  raw  life ;  and  these  novelists  strove  by  an 
accumulation  of  detail  to  produce  the  effect  of 
absolute  reality.  The  best  known  writers  of  this 
French  school  did  not  succeed  in  doing  this, 
although  they  achieved  striking  results  of  a 
different  character.  For  instance,  Emile  Zola  was 
successful  when  he  wrote  epic  panoramas  on 
subjects  such  as  life  in  a  mine,  life  in  a  huge 
shop,  or  life  during  a  great  war ;  that  is  to  say, 
he  was  poetically  successful  when  he  painted 
with  a  broad  brush  and  set  great  crowds  in 
motion.  He  produced  striking  pictures,  but  the 
effect  of  them  at  their  best  was  a  poetic,  romantic 
effect.  When  he  tried  to  be  realistic,  and  scien- 
tifically realistic,  when  he  endeavoured  to  say 
everything  by  piling  detail  on  detail,  he  merely 
succeeded  in  being  tedious  and  disgusting.  And 
so  far  from  telling  the  whole  truth,  he  produced 
an  effect  of  distorted  exaggeration  such  as  one 
receives  from  certain  kinds  of  magnifying  and 
distorting  mirrors. 

The  second  misunderstanding  with  regard  to 
the  word  "  realism  "  is  this.  Certain  people  think 
that  if  you  say  an  author  strives  to  attain  an 
effect  of  truth  and  reality  in  his  writings,  you 
must  necessarily  mean  that  he  is  without  either 
the  wish  or  the  power  to  select,  and  that  his  work 
is  therefore  chaotic.     Not  long  ago,  in  a  book  of 

i8 


REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

short  sketches,  I  included  a  very  short  and  in- 
adequate paper  on  certain  aspects  of  the  Russian 
stage ;  and  in  mentioning  Tchekov,  the  Russian 
dramatist,  I  made  the  following  statement :  "  The 
Russian  stage  simply  aims  at  one  thing :  to  depict 
everyday  life,  not  exclusively  the  brutality  of 
everyday  life,  nor  the  tremendous  catastrophes 
befalling  human  beings,  nor  to  devise  intricate 
problems  and  far-fetched  cases  of  conscience  in 
which  human  beings  might  possibly  be  entangled. 
It  simply  aims  at  presenting  glimpses  of  human 
beings  as  they  really  are,  and  by  means  of  such 
glimpses  it  opens  out  avenues  and  vistas  into 
their  lives."  I  added  further  that  I  considered 
such  plays  would  be  successful  in  any  country. 

A  reviewer,  commenting  on  this  in  an  interest- 
ing article,  said  that  these  remarks  revealed  the 
depth  of  my  error  with  regard  to  realism.  "  As 
if  the  making  of  such  plays,"  wrote  the  reviewer, 
"  were  not  the  perpetual  aim  of  dramatists  !  But 
a  dramatist  would  be  putting  chaos  and  not  real 
life  on  the  stage  if  he  presented  imitations  of 
unselected  people  doing  unselected  things  at  un- 
selected  moments.  The  idea  which  binds  the 
drama  together,  an  idea  derived  by  reason  from 
experience  of  life  at  large,  is  the  most  real  and 
lifelike  part  in  it,  if  the  drama  is  a  good  one." 

Now  I  am  as  well  aware  as  this  reviewer,  or 
as  any  one  else,  that  it    is  the  perpetual  aim  of 

19 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

dramatists  to  make  such  plays.  But  it  is  an  aim 
which  they  often  fail  to  achieve.  For  instance, 
we  have  had,  during  the  last  thirty  years  in 
England  and  France,  many  successful  and  striking 
plays  in  which  the  behaviour  of  the  characters 
although  effective  from  a  theatrical  point  of  view, 
is  totally  unlike  the  behaviour  of  men  and  women 
in  real  life.  Again,  when  I  wrote  of  the  Russian 
stage,  I  never  for  a  moment  suggested  that  the 
Russian  dramatist  did,  or  that  any  dramatist 
should,  present  imitations  of  unselected  people 
doing  unselected  things  at  unselected  moments. 
As  my  sketch  was  a  short  one,  I  was  not  able  to 
go  into  the  question  in  full  detail,  but  I  should 
have  thought  that  if  one  said  that  a  play  was 
true  to  life,  and  at  the  same  time  theatrically 
and  dramatically  successful,  that  is  to  say,  interest- 
ing to  a  large  audience,  an  ordinary  reader  would 
have  taken  for  granted  (as  many  of  my  readers 
did  take  for  granted)  that  in  the  work  of  such 
dramatists  there  must  necessarily  have  been 
selection. 

Later  on  in  this  book  I  shall  deal  at  some 
length  with  the  plays  of  Anton  Tchekov,  and  in 
discussing  that  writer,  I  hope  to  make  it  clear  that 
his  work,  so  far  from  presenting  imitations  of 
unselected  people  doing  unselected  things  at 
unselected  moments,  are  imitations  of  selected 
but  real  people,  doing  selected  but  probable  things 

20 


REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

at  selected  but  interesting  moments.  But  the 
difference  between  Tchekov  and  most  English  and 
French  dramatists  (save  those  of  the  quite  modern 
school)  is,  that  the  moments  which  Tchekov  selects 
appear  at  first  sight  to  be  trivial.  His  genius  con- 
sists in  the  power  of  revealing  the  dramatic  signifi- 
cance of  the  seemingly  trivial.  It  stands  to  reason, 
as  I  shall  try  to  point  out  later  on,  that  the  more 
realistic  your  play,  the  more  it  is  true  to  life ;  the 
less  obvious  action  there  is  in  it,  the  greater  must 
be  the  skill  of  the  dramatist ;  the  surer  his  art,  the 
more  certain  his  power  of  construction,  the  nicer 
his  power  of  selection. 

Mr.  Max  Beerbohm  once  pointed  this  out  by 
an  apt  illustration.  "  The  dramatist,"  he  said, 
"  who  deals  in  heroes,  villains,  buffoons,  queer 
people  who  are  either  doing  or  suffering  either 
tremendous  or  funny  things,  has  a  very  valuable 
advantage  over  the  playwright  who  deals  merely 
in  humdrum  you  and  me.  The  dramatist  has 
his  material  as  a  springboard.  The  adramatist 
must  leap  as  best  he  can  on  the  hard  high 
road,  the  adramatist  must  be  very  much  an 
athlete." 

That  is  just  it :  many  of  the  modern  (and 
ancient)  Russian  playwriters  are  adramatists.  But 
they  are  extremely  athletic ;  and  so  far  from 
their  work  being  chaotic,  they  sometimes  give 
evidence,  as  in  the  case  of  Tchekov,  of  a  supreme 

21 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

mastery  over  the  construction  and  architectonics 
of  drama,  as  well  as  of  an  unerring  instinct  for 
what  will  be  telling  behind  footlights,  although 
at  first  sight  their  choice  does  not  seem  to  be 
obviously  dramatic. 

Therefore,  everything  I  have  said  so  far  can 
be  summed  up  in  two  statements:  Firstly,  that 
Russian  literature,  because  it  deals  with  realism, 
has  nothing  in  common  with  the  work  of  certain 
French  "  Naturalists,"  by  whose  work  the  word 
"  realism "  has  achieved  so  wide  a  notoriety 
secondly,  Russian  literature,  although  it  is  real- 
istic, is  not  necessarily  chaotic,  and  contains 
many  supreme  achievements  in  the  art  of 
selection.  But  I  wish  to  discuss  the  peculiar 
quality  of  Russian  realism,  because  it  appears 
to  me  that  it  is  this  quality  which  differentiates 
Russian  literature  from  the  literature  of  other 
countries. 

I  have  not  dealt  in  this  book  with  Russian 
poets,  firstly,  because  the  number  of  readers  who 
are  familiar  with  Russian  poetry  in  its  original 
tongue  is  limited  ;  and,  secondly,  because  it  appears 
to  me  impossible  to  discuss  Russian  poetry,  if  one 
is  forced  to  deal  in  translations,  since  no  trans- 
lation, however  good,  can  give  the  reader  an  idea 
either  of  the  music,  the  atmosphere,  or  the 
charm  of  the  original.  But  it  is  in  Russian 
poetry   that    the    quality    of   Russian   realism   is 

22 


REALISxM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

perhaps  most  clearly  made  manifest.  Any  reader 
familiar  with  German  literature  will,  I  think,  agree 
that  if  one  compares  French  or  English  poetry 
with  German  poetry,  and  French  and  English 
Romanticism  with  German  Romanticism,  one  is 
conscious,  when  one  approaches  the  work  of  the 
Germans,  of  entering  into  a  more  sober  and  more 
quiet  dominion ;  one  leaves  behind  one  the  ex- 
uberance of  England  :  "  the  purple  patches  "  of  a 
Shakespeare,  the  glowing  richness  of  a  Keats,  the 
soaring  rainbow  fancies  of  a  Shelley,  the  wizard 
horizons  of  a  Coleridge.  One  also  leaves  behind 
one  the  splendid  rhetoric  and  glitter  of  France : 
the  clarions  of  Corneille,  the  harps  and  flutes  of 
Racine,  the  great  many-piped  organ  of  Victor 
Hugo,  the  stormy  pageants  of  Musset,  the  gorgeous 
lyricism  of  Flaubert,  the  jewelled  dreams  of 
Gautier,  and  all  the  colour  and  the  pomp  of  the 
Parnassians.  One  leaves  all  these  things  behind, 
and  one  steps  into  a  world  of  quiet  skies,  rustling 
leaves,  peaceful  meadows,  and  calm  woods,  where 
the  birds  twitter  cheerfully  and  are  answered 
by  the  plaintive  notes  of  pipe  or  reed,  or 
interrupted  by  the  homely  melody,  sometimes 
cheerful  and  sometimes  sad,  of  the  wandering 
fiddler. 

In  this  country,  it  is  true,  we  have  visions  and 
vistas  of  distant  hills  and  great  brooding  waters, 
of    starlit   nights  and   magical  twilights ;   in  this 

23 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

country,  it  is  also  true  that  we  hear  the  echoes  of 
magic  horns,  the  footfall  of  the  fairies,  the  tinkling 
hammers  of  the  sedulous  Kobolds,  and  the  champ- 
ing and  the  neighing  of  the  steeds  of  Chivalry. 
But  there  is  nothing  wildly  fantastic,  nor  por- 
tentously exuberant,  nor  gorgeously  dazzling; 
nothing  tempestuous,  unbridled,  or  extreme. 
When  the  Germans  have  wished  to  express  such 
things,  they  have  done  so  in  their  music;  they 
certainly  have  not  done  so  in  their  poetry.  What 
they  have  done  in  their  poetry,  and  what  they 
have  done  better  than  any  one  else,  is  to  express 
in  the  simplest  of  all  words  the  simplest  of  all 
thoughts  and  feelings.  They  have  spoken  of 
first  love,  of  spring  and  the  flowers,  the  smiles  and 
tears  of  children,  the  dreams  of  youth  and  the 
musings  of  old  age — with  a  simplicity,  a  homeli- 
ness no  writers  of  any  other  country  have  ever 
excelled.  And  when  they  deal  with  the  super- 
natural, with  ghosts,  fairies,  legends,  deeds  of 
prowess  or  phantom  lovers,  there  is  a  quaint 
homeliness  about  the  recital  of  such  things,  as 
though  they  were  being  told  by  the  fireside  in  a 
cottage,  or  being  sung  on  the  village  green  to  the 
accompaniment  of  a  hurdy-gurdy.  To  many 
Germans  the  phantasy  of  a  Shelley  or  of  a 
Victor  Hugo  is  essentially  alien  and  unpalatable. 
They  feel  as  though  they  were  listening  to  men 
who  are   talking    too   loud   and    too    wildly,  and 

24 


REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

they  merely  wish  to  get  away  or  to  stop 
their  ears.  Again,  poets  like  Keats  or  Gautier 
often  produce  on  them  the  impression  that 
they  are  listening  to  sensuous  and  meaningless 
echoes. 

Now  Russian  poetry  is  a  step  farther  on  in 
this  same  direction.  The  reader  who  enters  the 
kingdom  of  Russian  poetry,  after  having  visited 
those  of  France  and  England,  experiences  what 
he  feels  in  entering  the  German  region,  but  still 
more  so.  The  region  of  Russian  poetry  is  still 
more  earthy.  Even  the  mysticism  of  certain 
German  Romantic  writers  is  alien  to  it.  The 
German  poetic  country  is  quiet  and  sober,  it  is 
true ;  but  in  its  German  forests  you  hear,  as  I  have 
said,  the  noise  of  those  hoofs  which  are  bearing 
riders  to  the  unknown  country.  Also  you  have 
in  German  literature,  allegory  and  pantheistic 
dreams  which  are  foreign  to  the  Russian  poetic 
temperament,  and  therefore  unreflected  in  Russian 
poetry. 

The  Russian  poetical  temperament,  and,  conse- 
quently, Russian  poetry,  does  not  only  closely 
cling  to  the  solid  earth,  but  it  is  based  on  and 
saturated  with  sound  common  sense,  with  a  curious 
matter-of-fact  quality.  And  this  common  sense 
with  which  the  greatest  Russian  poet,  Pushkin, 
is  so  thoroughly  impregnated,  is  as  foreign  to 
German  Schwdrmerei  as  it  is  to  French  rhetoric, 

25 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

or  the  imaginative  exuberance  of  England.  In 
Russian  poetry  of  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  in  spite  of  the  enthusiasm  kindled  in  cer- 
tain Russian  poets  by  the  romantic  scenery  of  the 
Caucasus,  there  is  very  little  feeling  for  nature. 
Nature,  in  the  poetry  of  Pushkin,  is  more  or  less 
conventional :  almost  the  only  flower  mentioned 
is  the  rose,  almost  the  only  bird  the  nightingale. 
And  although  certain  Russian  poets  adopted  the 
paraphernalia  and  the  machinery  of  Romanticism 
(largely  owing  to  the  influence  of  Byron),  their 
true  nature,  their  fundamental  sense,  keeps  on 
breaking  out.  Moreover,  there  is  an  element  in 
Russian  Romanticism  of  passive  obedience,  of 
submission  to  authority,  which  arises  partly  from 
the  passive  quality  in  all  Russians,  and  partly 
from  the  atmosphere  of  the  age  and  the  poli- 
tical regime  of  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Thus  it  is  that  no  Russian  Romantic 
poet  would  have  ever  tried  to  reach  the  dim 
pinnacles  of  Shelley's  speculative  cities,  and  no 
Russian  Romantic  poet  would  have  uttered  a  wild 
cry  of  revolt  such  as  Musset's  "  Rolla."  But 
what  the  Russian  poets  did  do,  and  what  they  did 
in  a  manner  which  gives  them  an  unique  place 
in  the  history  of  the  world's  literature,  was  to 
extract  poetry  from  the  daily  life  they  saw  round 
them,  and  to  express  it  in  forms  of  incomparable 
beauty.     Russian  poetry,  like  the  Russian  nature, 

26 


REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

is  plastic.  Plasticity,  adaptability,  comprehen- 
siveness, are  the  great  qualities  of  Pushkin.  His 
verse  is  "  simple,  sensuous  and  impassioned "  ; 
there  is  nothing  indistinct  about  it,  no  vague 
outline  and  no  blurred  detail ;  it  is  perfectly 
balanced,  and  it  is  this  sense  of  balance  and 
proportion  blent  with  a  rooted  common 
sense,  which  reminds  the  reader  when  he  reads 
Pushkin  of  Greek  art,  and  gives  one  the  impres- 
sion that  the  poet  is  a  classic,  however  much 
he  may  have  employed  the  stock-in-trade  of 
Romanticism. 

Meredith  says  somewhere  that  the  poetry  of 
mortals  is  their  daily  prose.  It  is  precisely 
this  kind  of  poetry,  the  poetry  arising  from  the 
incidents  of  everyday  life,  which  the  Russian 
poets  have  been  successful  in  transmuting  into 
verse.  There  is  a  quality  of  matter-of-factness 
in  Russian  poetry  which  is  unique ;  the  same 
quality  exists  in  Russian  folklore  and  fairy  tales ; 
even  Russian  ghosts,  and  certainly  the  Russian 
devil,  have  an  element  of  matter-of-factness 
about  them ;  and  the  most  Romantic  of  all 
Russian  poets,  Lermontov,  has  certain  qualities 
which  remind  one  more  of  Thackeray  than  of 
Byron  or  Shelley,  who  undoubtedly  influenced 
him. 

I  will  quote  as  an  example  of  this  one  of  his 
most  famous  poems.      It  is  called  "  The  Testa- 

27 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

ment,"  and  it  is  the  utterance  of  a  man  who  has 
been  mortally  wounded  in  battle. 

"I  want  to  be  alone  with  you,^ 
A  moment  quite  alone. 
The  minutes  left  to  me  are  few, 
They  say  I'll  soon  be  gone. 
And  you'll  be  going  home  on  leave, 
Then  tell  .  .  .  but  why?     I  do  believe 
There's  not  a  soul,  who'll  greatly  care 
To  hear  about  me  over  there. 

And  yet  if  some  one  asks  you,  well, 

Let  us  suppose  they  do — 
A  bullet  hit  me  here,  you'll  tell, — 

The  chest, — and  it  went  through. 
And  say  I  died  and  for  the  Tsar, 
And  say  what  fools  the  doctors  are  ; — 
And  that  I  shook  you  by  the  hand, 
And  thought  about  my  native  land. 

My  father  and  my  mother,  there  ! 

They  may  be  dead  by  now ; 
To  tell  the  truth,  I  wouldn't  care 

To  grieve  them  anyhow. 
If  one  of  them  is  living,  say 
I'm  bad  at  writing  home,  and  they 
Have  sent  us  to  the  front,  you  see, — 
And  that  they  needn't  wait  for  me. 

They've  got  a  neighbour,  as  you  know. 

And  you  remember  I 
And  she  .  .  .  How  very  long  ago 

It  is  we  said  good-bye  ! 
She  won't  ask  after  me,  nor  care. 
But  tell  her  ev'rything,  don't  spare 
Her  empty  heart ;  and  let  her  cry ; — 
To  her  it  doesn't  signify." 

^  This  translation  is  in  the  metre  of  the  original.     It  is  literal ; 
but  hopelessly  inadequate. 

28 


REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

The  words  of  this  poem  are  the  words  of 
familiar  conversation  ;  they  are  exactly  what  the 
soldier  would  say  in  such  circumstances.  There  is 
not  a  single  literary  or  poetical  expression  used. 
And  yet  the  effect  in  the  original  is  one  of 
poignant  poetical  feeling  and  consummate  poetic 
art.  I  know  of  no  other  language  where  the 
thing  is  possible ;  because  if  you  translate  the 
Russian  by  the  true  literary  equivalents,  you 
would  have  to  say :  "  I  would  like  a  word  alone 
with  you,  old  fellow,"  or  ''  old  chap,"  ^  or  something 
of  that  kind  ;  and  I  know  of  no  English  poet  who 
has  ever  been  able  to  deal  successfully  (in  poetry) 
with  the  speech  of  everyday  life  without  the  help 
of  slang  or  dialect.  What  is  needed  for  this  are 
the  Russian  temperament  and  the  Russian  language. 

I  will  give  another  instance  of  what  I  mean. 
There  is  a  Russian  poet  called  Krilov,  who  wrote 
fables  such  as  those  of  La  Fontaine,  based  for  the 
greater  part  on  those  of  ^sop.  He  wrote  a 
version  of  what  is  perhaps  La  Fontaine's  master- 
piece, "  Les  Deux  Pigeons,"  which  begins  thus  : 

"Two  pigeons,  like  two  brothers,  lived  together. 
They  shared  their  all  in  fair  and  wintry  weather. 
Where  the  one  was  the  other  would  be  near, 
And  every  joy  they  shared  and  every  tear. 
They  noticed  not  Time's  flight.     Sadness  they  knew ; 
But  weary  of  each  other  never  grew." 

^  In  the  Russian,  although  every  word  of  the  poem  is  familiar, 
not  a  word  of  slang  is  used. 

29 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

This  last  line,  translated  literally,  runs :  "  They 
were  sometimes  sad,  they  were  never  bored."  It  is 
one  of  the  most  poetical  in  the  whole  range  of 
Russian  literature ;  and  yet  how  absolutely  un- 
translatable ! — not  only  into  English,  but  into  any 
other  language.  How  can  one  convey  the  word 
"  boring  "  so  that  it  shall  be  poetical,  in  English  or 
in  French  ?  In  Russian  one  can,  simply  from  the 
fact  that  the  word  which  means  boring, "  skouchno," 
is  just  as  fit  for  poetic  use  as  the  word  "  groustno," 
which  means  sad.  And  this  proves  that  it  is  easier 
for  Russians  to  make  poetry  out  of  the  language 
of  everyday  than  it  is  for  Englishmen. 

The  matter-of-fact  quality  of  the  Russian 
poetical  temperament — its  dislike  of  exaggeration 
and  extravagance- — is  likewise  clearly  visible  in 
the  manner  in  which  Russian  poets  write  of  nature. 
I  have  already  said  that  the  poets  of  the  early 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  reveal  (compared 
with  their  European  contemporaries)  only  a 
mild  sentiment  for  the  humbler  aspects  of 
nature;  but  let  us  take  a  poet  of  a  later 
epoch,  Alexis  Tolstoy,  who  wrote  in  the  fifties, 
and  who  may  not  unfairly  be  called  a  Russian 
Tennyson.  In  the  work  of  Tolstoy  the  love  of 
nature  reveals  itself  on  almost  every  page.  His 
work  brings  before  our  eyes  the  landscape  of  the 
South  of  Russia,  and  expresses  the  charm  and 
the  quality  of  that  country  in  the  same  way  as 

30 


REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Tennyson's  "  In  Memoriam "  evokes  for  us  the 
sight  of  England.  Yet  if  one  compares  the  two, 
the  work  of  the  Russian  poet  is  nearer  to  the 
earth,  familiar  and  simple  in  a  fashion  which  is 
beyond  the  reach  of  other  languages.  Here,  for 
instance,  is  a  rough  translation  of  one  of  Alexis 
Tolstoy's  poems : 

"Through  the  slush  and  the  ruts  of  the  road, 
By  the  side  of  the  dam  of  the  stream ; 
Where  the  wet  fishing  nets  are  spread, 
The  carriage  jogs  on,  and  I  muse. 

I  muse  and  I  look  at  the  road, 
At  the  damp  and  the  dull  grey  sky, 
At  the  shelving  bank  of  the  lake. 
And  the  far-off  smoke  of  the  villages. 

By  the  dam,  with  a  cheerless  face, 

Is  walking  a  tattered  old  Jew. 

From  the  lake,  with  a  splashing  of  foam, 

The  waters  rush  through  the  weir. 

A  little  boy  plays  on  a  pipe. 
He  has  made  it  out  of  a  reed. 
The  startled  wild-ducks  have  flown, 
And  call  as  they  sweep  from  the  lake. 

Near  the  old  crumbling  mill 
Labourers  sit  on  the  grass. 
An  old  worn  horse  in  a  cart, 
Is  lazily  dragging  some  sacks. 

And  I  know  it  all,  oh  !  so  well, 

Although  I  have  never  been  here ; 

The  roof  of  that  house  over  there, 

And  that  boy,  and  the  wood,  and  the  weir, 

And  the  mournful  voice  of  the  mill. 
And  the  crumbling  barn  in  the  field — 
I  have  been  here  and  seen  it  before, 
And  forgotten  it  all  long  ago. 

31 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

This  very  same  horse  plodded  on, 
It  was  dragging  the  very  same  sacks  ; 
And  under  the  mouldering  mill 
Labourers  sat  on  the  grass. 

And  the  Jew,  with  his  beard,  walked  by, 
And  the  weir  made  just  such  a  noise. 
All  this  has  happened  before, 
Only,  I  cannot  tell  when." 

I  have  said  that  Russian  fairy  tales  and  folk 
stories  are  full  of  the  same  spirit  of  matter-of- 
factness.  And  so  essential  do  I  consider  this 
factor  to  be,  so  indispensable  do  I  consider  the 
comprehension  of  it  by  the  would-be  student  of 
Russian  literature,  that  I  will  quote  a  short  folk- 
story  at  length,  which  reveals  this  quality  in  its 
essence.  The  reader  will  only  have  to  compare 
the  following  tale  in  his  mind  with  a  French, 
English,  or  German  fairy  tale  to  see  what  I  mean. 


The  Fool 

Once  upon  a  time  in  a  certain  kingdom  there 
lived  an  old  man,  and  he  had  three  sons.  Two 
of  them  were  clever,  the  third  was  a  fool.  The 
father  died,  and  the  sons  drew  lots  for  his  pro- 
perty :  the  clever  sons  won  every  kind  of  useful 
thing ;  the  fool  only  received  an  old  ox,  and  that 
was  a  lean  and  bony  one. 

The  time  of  the  fair  came,  and  the  clever 
brothers  made  themselves    ready  to  go   and    do 

32 


REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

a    deal.      The    fool    saw    them    doing    this,    and 
said  : 

"  I  also,  brothers,  shall  take  my  ox  to  the 
market." 

And  he  led  his  ox  by  a  rope  tied  to  its  horn, 
towards  the  town.  On  the  way  to  the  town  he 
went  through  a  wood,  and  in  the  wood  there  stood 
an  old  dried-up  birch  tree.  The  wind  blew  and 
the  birch  tree  groaned. 

"  Why  does  the  birch  tree  groan  ?  "  thought  the 
fool.  "  Does  it  perhaps  wish  to  bargain  for  my 
ox  ?  Now  tell  me,  birch  tree,  if  you  wish  to 
buy.  If  that  is  so,  buy.  The  price  of  the  ox  is 
twenty  roubles  :  I  cannot  take  less.  Show  your 
money." 

But  the  birch  tree  answered  nothing  at  all,  and 
only  groaned,  and  the  fool  was  astonished  that 
the  birch  tree  wished  to  receive  the  ox  on  credit. 

"If  that  is  so,  I  will  wait  till  to-morrow,"  said 
the  fool. 

He  tied  the  ox  to  the  birch  tree,  said  good-bye 
to  it,  and  went  home. 

The  clever  brothers  came  to  him  and  began  to 
question  him. 

"  Well,  fool,"  they  said,  "have  you  sold  your  ox?" 

"  I  have  sold  it." 

"  Did  you  sell  it  dear  ?  " 

"  I  sold  it  for  twenty  roubles." 

"  And  where  is  the  money  ?  " 
c  33 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

"  I  have  not  yet  got  the  money.  I  have  been 
told  I  shall  receive  it  to-morrow." 

"  Oh,  you  simpleton  1 "  said  the  clever  brothers. 
On  the  next  day,  early  in  the  morning,  the  fool 
got  up,  made  himself  ready,  and  went  to  the 
birch  tree  for  his  money.  He  arrived  at  the 
wood ;  the  birch  tree  was  there,  swaying  in  the 
wind,  but  the  ox  was  not  there  any  more, — the 
wolves  had  eaten  him  in  the  night. 

"  Now,  countryman,"  said  the  fool  to  the  birch 
tree,  "  pay  me  the  money.  You  promised  you 
would  pay  it  to-day." 

The  wind  blew,  the  birch  tree  groaned,  and  the 
fool  said : 

"  Well,  you  are  an  untrustworthy  fellow ! 
Yesterday  you  said,  '  I  will  pay  the  money  to- 
morrow,' and  to-day  you  are  trying  to  get  out  of 
it.  If  this  is  so  I  will  wait  yet  another  day,  but 
after  that  I  shall  wait  no  longer,  for  I  shall  need 
the  money  myself." 

The  fool  went  home,  and  his  clever  brothers 
again  asked  him  :  "  Well,  have  you  received  your 
money  ? " 

"  No,  brothers,"  he  answered,  "  I  shall  have  to 
wait  still  another  little  day." 
"  Whom  did  you  sell  it  to  ?  " 
"  A  dried  old  birch  tree  in  the  wood." 
"  See  what  a  fool  ! "  said  the  brothers. 
On  the  third  day  the  fool  took  an  axe  and  set 
34 


REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

out  for  the  wood.      He  arrived  and  demanded  the 
money. 

The  birch  tree  groaned  and  groaned. 

"  No,  countryman/'  said  the  fool,  "  if  you  always 
put  off  everything  till  the  morrow,  I  shall  never 
get  anything  from  you  at  all.  I  do  not  like 
joking,  and  I  shall  settle  matters  with  you  at 
once  and  for  all." 

He  took  the  axe  and  struck  the  tree,  and  the 
chips  flew  on  all  sides. 

Now  in  the  tree  was  a  hollow,  and  in  this 
hollow  some  robbers  had  hidden  a  bag  of  gold. 
The  tree  was  split  into  two  parts,  and  the  fool 
saw  a  heap  of  red  gold ;  and  he  gathered  the  gold 
together  in  a  heap  and  took  some  of  it  home  and 
showed  it  to  his  brothers. 

And  his  brothers  said  to  him  : 

"  Where  did  you  get  such  a  lot  of  money,  fool  ?  " 

"  A  countryman  of  mine  gave  it  to  me  for  my 
ox,"  he  said,  "  and  there  is  still  a  great  deal  left. 
I  could  not  bring  half  of  it  home.  Let  us  go, 
brothers,  and  get  the  rest  of  it." 

They  went  into  the  wood  and  found  the  money, 
and  brought  it  home. 

"  Now  look  you,  fool,"  said  the  clever  brothers, 
"  do  not  tell  any  one  that  we  have  so  much 
money." 

"  Of  course  not,"  said  the  fool,  "  I  will  not  tell 
any  one,  I  promise  you." 

35 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

But  soon  after  this  they  met  a  deacon. 

"  What  are  you  bringing  from  the  wood, 
children  ?  "  said  the  deacon. 

"  Mushrooms,"  said  the  clever  brothers. 

But  the  fool  interrupted  and  said :  "  They  are 
not  telling  the  truth  —  we  are  bringing  gold. 
Look  at  it  if  you  will." 

The  deacon  gasped  with  astonishment,  fell 
upon  the  gold,  and  took  as  much  as  he  could 
and  stuffed  his  pockets  full  of  it. 

But  the  fool  was  annoyed  at  this,  and  struck 
him  with  an  axe  and  beat  him  till  he  was  dead. 

"  Oh  fool,  what  have  you  done  ? "  said  his 
brothers.  "  You  will  be  ruined,  and  ruin  us  also. 
What  shall  we  do  now  with  this  dead  body  ? " 

They  thought  and  they  thought,  and  then  they 
took  it  to  an  empty  cellar  and  threw  it  into  the 
cellar. 

Late  in  the  evening  the  eldest  brother  said  to 
the  second  :  "  This  is  a  bad  business.  As  soon  as 
they  miss  the  deacon  the  fool  is  certain  to  tell  them 
all  about  it.  Let  us  kill  a  goat  and  hide  it  in 
the  cellar  and  put  the  dead  body  in  some  other 
place." 

They  waited  until  the  night  was  dark  ;  then  they 
killed  a  goat,  threw  it  into  the  cellar,  and  took 
the  body  of  the  deacon  to  another  place  and 
buried  it  in  the  earth. 

A    few  days    passed ;    people    looked    for    the 

36 


REALISM  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

deacon  everywhere,  and  asked  everybody  they 
could  about  him.     And  the  fool  said  to  them : 

"  What  do  you  want  of  him  ?  I  killed  him 
with  an  axe,  and  my  brothers  threw  the  body 
into  the  cellar." 

They  at  once  seized  the  fool  and  said  to  him  : 

"  Take  us  and  show  us." 

The  fool  climbed  into  the  cellar,  took  out  the 
head  of  the  goat,  and  said  : 

"  Was  your  deacon  black  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  they  said. 

"  And  had  he  got  a  beard  ?  " 

"  Yes,  he  had  a  beard." 

"  And  had  he  got  horns  ?  " 

*'  What  sort  of  horns,  you  fool  ?  " 

"  Well,  look  !  "     And  he  threw  down  the  head. 

The  people  looked  and  saw  that  it  was  a  goat, 
and  they  spat  at  the  fool  and  went  home. 

This  story,  more  than  pages  of  analysis  and 
more  than  chapters  of  argument,  illustrates  what 
I  mean  :  namely,  that  if  the  Russian  poet  and 
the  Russian  peasant,  the  one  in  his  verse,  the 
other  in  his  folk  tales  and  fairy  stories,  are 
matter-of-fact,  alien  to  flights  of  exaggerated 
fancy,  and  above  all  things  enamoured  of  the 
truth ;  if  by  their  closeness  to  nature,  their  gift  of 
seeing  things  as  they  are,  and  expressing  these 
things  in  terms  of  the  utmost  simplicity,  without 

37 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

fuss,  without  affectation  and  without  artificiality, — 
if,  I  say,  all  this  entitles  us  to  call  them  realists, 
then  this  realism  is  not  and  must  never  be  thought 
of  as  being  the  fad  of  a  special  school,  the  theory 
of  a  limited  clique,  or  the  watchword  of  a  literary 
camp,  but  it  is  rather  the  natural  expression  of 
the  Russian  temperament  and  the  Russian 
character. 

I  will  try  throughout  this  book  to  attempt  to 
illustrate  this  character  and  this  temperament 
as  best  I  can,  by  observing  widely  different 
manifestations  of  it ;  but  all  these  manifesta- 
tions, however  different  they  may  be,  contain 
one  great  quality  in  common :  that  is,  the  quality 
of  reality  of  which  I  have  been  writing.  And 
unless  the  student  of  Russian  literature  realises 
this  and  appreciates  what  Russian  realism  consists 
of,  and  what  it  really  means,  he  will  be  unable  to 
understand  either  the  men  or  the  literature  of 
Russia. 


38 


CHAPTER   III 

GOGOL  AND   THE   CHEERFULNESS   OF 
THE   RUSSIAN   PEOPLE 

THE  first  thing  that  strikes  the  English 
reader  when  he  dips  into  translations  of 
Russian  literature,  is  the  unrelieved  gloom,  the 
unmitigated  pessimism  of  the  characters  and  the 
circumstances  described.  Everything  is  grey, 
everybody  is  depressed ;  the  atmosphere  is  one 
of  hopeless  melancholy.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
first  thing  that  strikes  the  English  traveller  when 
he  arrives  in  Russia  for  the  first  time,  is  the 
cheerfulness  of  the  Russian  people.  Nowhere 
have  I  seen  this  better  described  than  in  an 
article,  written  by  Mr.  Charles  Hands,  which 
appeared  in  the  summer  of  1905  in  The  Daily 
Mail.  Mr.  Hands  summed  up  his  idea  of  the 
Russian  people,  which  he  had  gathered  after 
living  with  them  for  two  years,  both  in  peace  and 
in  war,  in  a  short  article.  His  final  impression 
was  the  same  as  that  which  he  received  on  the 

39 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

day  he  arrived  in  Russia  for  the  first  time. 
That  was  in  winter ;  it  was  snowing ;  the  cold 
was  intense.  The  streets  of  St.  Petersburg 
were  full  of  people,  and  in  spite  of  the  driving 
snow,  the  bitter  wind,  and  the  cruel  cold, 
everybody  was  smiling,  everybody  was  making 
the  best  of  it.  Nowhere  did  you  hear  people 
grumbling,  or  come  across  a  face  stamped  with  a 
grievance. 

I  myself  experienced  an  impression  of  the  same 
kind,  one  evening  in  July  1906.  I  was  strolling 
about  the  streets  of  St.  Petersburg.  It  was  the 
Sunday  of  the  dissolution  of  the  Duma ;  the  dis- 
solution had  been  announced  that  very  morning. 
The  streets  were  crowded  with  people,  mostly 
poor  people.  I  was  walking  with  an  English- 
man who  had  spent  some  years  in  Russia,  and  he 
said  to  me :  "It  is  all  very  well  to  talk  of  the 
calamities  of  this  country.  Have  you  ever  in 
your  life  seen  a  more  cheerful  Sunday  crowd  ? " 
I  certainly  had  not. 

The  Russian  character  has  an  element  of  happy 
consent  and  submission  to  the  inevitable ;  of 
adapting  itself  to  any  circumstance,  however  dis- 
agreeable, which  I  have  never  come  across  in  any 
other  country.  The  Russians  have  a  faculty  of 
making  the  best  of  things  which  I  have  never 
seen  developed  in  so  high  a  degree.  I  remember 
once  in  Manchuria  during  the  war,  some  soldiers, 

40 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

who  were  under  the  command  of  a  sergeant, 
preparing  early  one  morning,  just  before  the  battle 
of  Ta-Shi-Chiao,  to  make  some  tea.  Suddenly 
a  man  in  command  said  there  would  not  be 
time  to  have  tea.  The  men  simply  said,  "  To- 
day no  tea  will  be  drunk,"  with  a  smile ;  it  did 
not  occur  to  any  one  to  complain,  and  they  put 
away  the  kettle,  which  was  just  on  the  boil,  and 
drove  away  in  a  cart.  I  witnessed  this  kind  of 
incident  over  and  over  again.  I  remember  one 
night  at  a  place  called  Lonely  Tree  Hill.  I  was 
with  a  battery.  We  had  just  arrived,  and  there 
were  no  quarters.  We  generally  lived  in  Chinese 
houses,  but  on  this  occasion  there  were  none  to 
be  found.  We  encamped  on  the  side  of  a  hill. 
There  was  no  shelter,  no  food,  and  no  fire,  and 
presently  it  began  to  rain.  The  Cossacks,  of 
whom  the  battery  was  composed,  made  a  kind  of 
shelter  out  of  what  straw  and  millet  they  could 
find,  and  settled  themselves  down  as  comfortably 
and  as  cheerfully  as  if  they  had  been  in  barracks. 
They  accomplished  the  difficult  task  of  making 
themselves  comfortable  out  of  nothing,  and  of 
making  me  comfortable  also. 

Besides  this  power  of  making  the  best  of  things, 
the  Russians  have  a  keen  sense  of  humour.  The 
clowns  in  their  circuses  are  inimitable.  A  type 
you  frequently  meet  in  Russia  is  the  man  who 
tells     stories     and     anecdotes   which    are    distin- 

41 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

guished  by  simplicity  and  by  a  knack  of  just 
seizing  on  the  ludicrous  side  of  some  trivial 
episode  or  conversation.  Their  humour  is  not 
unlike  English  humour  in  kind,  and  this  explains 
the  wide  popularity  of  our  humorous  writers  in 
Russia,  beginning  with  Dickens,  including  such 
essentially  English  writers  as  W.  W.  Jacobs  and 
the  author  of  The  Diary  of  a  Nobody^  and 
ending  with  Jerome  K.  Jerome,  whose  complete 
works  can  be  obtained  at  any  Russian  railway 
station.^ 

All  these  elements  are  fully  represented  in 
Russian  literature ;  but  the  kind  of  Russian  litera- 
ture which  is  saturated  with  these  qualities  either 
does  not  reach  us  at  all,  or  reaches  us  in  scarce 
and  inadequate  translations. 

The  greatest  humorist  of  Russian  literature, 
the  Russian  Dickens,  is  Nikolai  Vasilievitch 
Gogol.  Translations  of  some  of  his  stories  and 
of  his  longest  work,  Dead  Souls,  were  published 
in  1887  by  Mr.  Vizetelly.  These  transla- 
tions are  now  out  of  print,  and  the  work  of 
Gogol  may  be  said  to  be  totally  unknown  in 
England.  In  France  some  of  his  stories  have 
been  translated  by  no  less  a  writer  than  Prosper 
Merimee. 

Gogol  was  a  Little  Russian,  a  Cossack  by  birth ; 

^  I  met  a  Russian  doctor  in  Manchuria,  who  knew  pages  of  a 
Russian  translation  of  Three  Men  in  a  Boat  by  heart. 

42 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS   OF  PEOPLE 

he  belonged  to  the  Ukraine,  that  is  to  say,  the 
frontier  country,  the  district  which  lies  between 
the  north  and  the  extreme  south.  It  is  a  country 
of  immense  plains,  rich  harvests,  and  smiling 
farms ;  of  vines,  laughter,  and  song.  He  was 
born  in  1809  near  Poltava,  in  the  heart  of  the 
Cossack  country.  He  was  brought  up  by  his 
grandfather,  who  had  been  the  regimental 
chronicler  of  the  Zaporozhian  Cossacks,  who  live 
in  the  region  beyond  the  falls  of  the  Dnieper. 
His  childhood  was  nursed  in  the  warlike  traditions 
of  that  race,  and  fed  with  the  tales  of  a  heroic 
epoch,  the  wars  against  Poland  and  the  deeds  of 
the  dwellers  of  the  Steppes.  Later  he  was  sent 
to  school,  and  in  1829,  when  he  was  twenty  years 
old,  he  went  to  St.  Petersburg,  where  after  many 
disillusions  and  difficulties  he  obtained  a  place  in 
a  Government  office.  The  time  that  he  spent  in 
this  office  gave  him  the  material  for  one  of  his 
best  stories.  He  soon  tired  of  office  work,  and 
tried  to  go  on  the  stage,  but  no  manager  would 
engage  him.  He  became  a  tutor,  but  was  not  a 
particularly  successful  one.  At  last  some  friends 
obtained  for  him  the  professorship  of  History  at 
the  University,  but  he  failed  in  this  profession 
also,  and  so  he  finally  turned  to  literature.  By 
the  publication  of  his  first  efforts  in  the  St 
Petersburg  press,  he  made  some  friends,  and 
through    these    he    obtained    an    introduction    to 

43 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Pushkin,  the  greatest  of  Russian  poets,  who  was 
at  that  time  in  the  fullness  of  his  fame. 

Pushkin  was  a  character  devoid  of  envy  and 
jealousy,  overflowing  with  generosity,  and  prodigal 
of  praise.  Gogol  subsequently  became  his 
favourite  writer,  and  it  was  Pushkin  who  urged 
Gogol  to  write  about  Russian  history  and  popular 
Russian  scenes.  Gogol  followed  his  advice  and 
wrote  the  Eve^iings  in  a  Farmhouse  on  the  Dikanka. 
These  stories  are  supposed  to  be  told  by  an  old 
beekeeper ;  and  in  them  Gogol  puts  all  the 
memories  of  his  childhood,  the  romantic  traditions, 
the  fairy  tales,  the  legends,  the  charming  scenery, 
and  the  cheerful  life  of  the  Little  Russian  country. 

In  these  stories  he  revealed  the  twofold  nature 
of  his  talent :  a  fantasy,  a  love  of  the  supernatural, 
and  a  power  of  making  us  feel  it,  which  reminds 
one  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  of  Hoffmann,  and  of 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson ;  and  side  by  side  with 
this  fantastic  element,  the  keenest  power  of 
observation,  which  is  mixed  with  an  infectious 
sense  of  humour  and  a  rich  and  delightful  drollery. 
Together  with  these  gifts,  Gogol  possessed  a  third 
quality,  which  is  a  blend  of  his  fantasy  and  his 
realism,  namely,  the  power  of  depicting  landscape 
and  places,  with  their  colour  and  their  atmosphere, 
in  warm  and  vivid  language.  It  is  this  latter 
gift  with  which  I  shall  deal  first.  Here,  for 
instance,  is  a  description  of  the  river  Dnieper : 

44 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

"  Wonderful  is  the  Dnieper  when  in  calm  weather, 
smooth  and  wilful,  it  drives  its  full  waters 
through  the  woods  and  the  hills ;  it  does  not 
whisper,  it  does  not  boom.  One  gazes  and  gazes 
without  being  able  to  tell  whether  its  majestic 
spaces  are  moving  or  not :  one  wonders  whether 
the  river  is  not  a  sheet  of  glass,  when  like  a  road 
of  crystal  azure,  measureless  in  its  breadth  and 
unending  in  its  length,  it  rushes  and  swirls  across 
the  green  world.  It  is  then  that  the  sun  loves 
to  look  down  from  the  sky  and  to  plunge  his 
rays  into  the  cool  limpid  waters ;  and  the  woods 
which  grow  on  the  banks  are  sharply  reflected  in 
the  river. 

"  The  green-tressed  trees  and  the  wild  flowers 
crowd  together  at  the  water's  edge ;  they  bend 
down  and  gaze  at  themselves ;  they  are  never 
tired  of  their  own  bright  image,  but  smile  to  it 
and  greet  it,  as  they  incline  their  boughs.  They 
dare  not  look  into  the  midst  of  the  Dnieper ;  no 
one  save  the  sun  and  the  blue  sky  looks  into  that. 
It  is  rare  that  a  bird  flies  as  far  as  the  midmost 
waters.  Glorious  river,  there  is  none  other  like 
it  in  the  world  ! 

"  Wonderful  is  the  Dnieper  in  the  warm  summer 
nights  when  all  things  are  asleep :  men  and 
beasts  and  birds,  and  God  alone  in  His  majesty 
looks  round  on  the  heaven  and  the  earth  and 
royally  spreads  out  His  sacerdotal  vestment  and 
lets  it  tremble.  And  from  this  vestment  the  stars 
are  scattered  :  the  stars  burn  and  shine  over  the 
world,  and  all  are  reflected  in  the   Dnieper.      The 

45 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Dnieper  receives  them  all  into  its  dark  bosom  : 
not  one  escapes  it.  The  dark  wood  with  its 
sleeping  ravens,  and  the  old  rugged  mountains 
above  them,  try  to  hide  the  river  with  their  long 
dark  shadows,  but  it  is  in  vain  :  there  is  nothing 
in  all  the  world  which  could  overshadow  the 
Dnieper  !  Blue,  infinitely  blue,  its  smooth  surface 
is  always  moving  by  night  and  by  day,  and  is 
visible  in  the  distance  as  far  as  mortal  eye  can 
see.  It  draws  near  and  nestles  in  the  banks 
in  the  cool  of  the  night,  and  leaves  behind  it 
a  silver  trail,  that  gleams  like  the  blade  of 
a  sword  of  Damascus.  But  the  blue  river  is 
once  more  asleep.  Wonderful  is  the  Dnieper 
then,  and  there  is  nothing  like  it  in  the 
world  ! 

"  But  when  the  dark  clouds  gather  in  the  sky, 
and  the  black  wood  is  shaken  to  its  roots,  the 
oak  trees  tremble,  and  the  lightnings,  bursting 
in  the  clouds,  light  up  the  whole  world  again, 
terrible  then  is  the  Dnieper.  The  crests  of  the 
waters  thunder,  dashing  themselves  against  the 
hills ;  fiery  with  lightning,  and  loud  with  many 
a  moan,  they  retreat  and  dissolve  and  overflow 
in  tears  in  the  distance.  Just  in  such  a  way 
does  the  aged  mother  of  the  Cossack  weep  when 
she  goes  to  say  good-bye  to  her  son,  who  is  off 
to  the  wars.  He  rides  off,  wanton,  debonair, 
and  full  of  spirit ;  he  rides  on  his  black  horse 
with  his  elbows  well  out  at  the  side,  and  he  waves 
his  cap.  And  his  mother  sobs  and  runs  after 
him  ;  she  clutches  hold  of  his  stirrup,  seizes  the 

46 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

snaffle,    throws    her    arms    round   her   son,    and 
weeps  bitterly." 

Another  characteristic  description  of  Gogol's  is 
the  picture  he  gives  us  of  the  Steppes  : 

"  The  farther  they  went,  the  more  beautiful  the 
Steppes  became.  At  that  time  the  whole  of  the 
country  which  is  now  Lower  New  Russia,  reach- 
ing as  far  as  the  Black  Sea,  was  a  vast  green 
wilderness.  Never  a  plough  had  passed  over 
its  measureless  waves  of  wild  grass.  Only  the 
horses,  which  were  hidden  in  it  as  though  in  a 
wood,  trampled  it  down.  Nothing  in  Nature 
could  be  more  beautiful  than  this  grass.  The 
whole  of  the  surface  of  the  earth  was  like  a  gold 
and  green  sea,  on  which  millions  of  flowers  of 
different  colours  were  sprinkled.  Through  the 
high  and  delicate  stems  of  grass  the  cornflowers 
twinkled — light  blue,  dark  blue,  and  lilac.  The 
yellow  broom  pushed  upward  its  pointed  crests ; 
the  white  milfoil,  with  its  flowers  like  fairy  um- 
brellas, dappled  the  surface  of  the  grass ;  an  ear 
of  wheat,  which  had  come  Heaven  knows  whence, 
was  ripening. 

"  At  the  roots  of  the  flowers  and  the  grass, 
partridges  were  running  about  everywhere,  thrust- 
ing out  their  necks.  The  air  was  full  of  a 
thousand  different  bird  -  notes.  Hawks  hovered 
motionless  in  the  sky,  spreading  out  their  wings, 
and  fixing  their  eyes  on  the  grass.  The  cry 
of  a  flock  of  wild  geese  was  echoed  in  I  know 
not   what   far-off  lake.      A    gull    rose    from    the 

47 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

grass  in  measured  flight,  and  bathed  wantonly 
in  the  blue  air ;  now  she  has  vanished  in  the 
distance,  and  only  a  black  spot  twinkles ;  and 
now  she  wheels  in  the  air  and  glistens  in  the 
sun." 

Of  course,  descriptions  such  as  these  lose  all 
their  beauty  in  a  translation,  for  Gogol's  language 
is  rich  and  native ;  full  of  diminutives  and  racial 
idiom,  nervous  and  highly-coloured.  To  translate 
it  into  English  is  like  translating  Rabelais  into 
English.  I  have  given  these  two  examples  more 
to  show  the  nature  of  the  thing  he  describes  than 
the  manner  in  which  he  describes  it. 

Throughout  this  first  collection  of  stories  there 
is  a  blend  of  broad  farce  and  poetical  fancy ;  we 
are  introduced  to  the  humours  of  the  fair,  the 
adventures  of  sacristans  with  the  devil  and  other 
apparitions  ;  to  the  Russalka,  a  naiad,  a  kind  of 
land-mermaid,  or  Loreley,  which  haunts  the  woods 
and  the  lakes.  And  every  one  of  these  stories 
smells  of  the  South  Russian  soil,  and  is  over- 
flowing with  sunshine,  good-humour,  and  a  mellow 
charm.  This  side  of  Russian  life  is  not  only 
wholly  unknown  in  Europe,  but  it  is  not  even 
suspected.  The  picture  most  people  have  in 
their  minds  of  Russia  is  a  place  of  grey  skies  and 
bleak  monotonous  landscape,  weighed  down  by 
an  implacable  climate.  These  things  exist,  but 
there  is  another  side  as  well,  and  it  is  this  other 

48 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

side  that  Gogol  tells  of  in  his  early  stories.  We 
are  told  much  about  the  Russian  winter,  but  who 
ever  thinks  of  the  Russian  spring  ?  And  there  is 
nothing  more  beautiful  in  the  world,  even  in  the 
north  and  centre  of  Russia,  than  the  abrupt  and 
sudden  invasion  of  springtime  which  comes  shortly 
after  the  melting  snows,  when  the  woods  are 
carpeted  with  lilies-of-the-valley,  and  the  green 
of  the  birch  trees  almost  hurts  the  eye  with  its 
brilliance. 

Nor  are  we  told  much  about  the  Russian 
summer,  with  its  wonderful  warm  nights,  nor  of 
the  pageant  of  the  plains  when  they  become  a 
rippling  sea  of  golden  corn.  If  the  spring  and 
the  summer  are  striking  in  northern  and  central 
Russia,  much  more  is  this  so  in  the  south, 
where  the  whole  character  of  the  country  is  as 
cheerful  and  smiling  as  that  of  Devonshire  or 
Normandy.  The  farms  are  whitewashed  and 
clean ;  sometimes  they  are  painted  light  blue  or 
pink  ;  vines  grow  on  the  walls ;  there  is  an  atmo- 
sphere of  sunshine  and  laziness  everywhere,  accom- 
panied by  much  dancing  and  song. 

Once  when  I  was  in  St.  Petersburg  I  was 
talking  to  a  peasant  member  of  the  Duma  who 
came  from  the  south.  After  he  had  declaimed 
for  nearly  twenty  minutes  on  the  terrible  condition 
of  the  peasants  in  the  country,  their  needs,  their 
wants,  their  misery,  their  ignorance,  he  added 
D  49 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

thoughtfully :  "  All  the  same  we  have  great  fun 
in  our  village ;  you  ought  to  come  and  stay  there. 
There  is  no  such  life  in  the  world  !  "  The  sun- 
shine and  laughter  of  the  south  of  Russia  rise 
before  us  from  every  page  of  these  stories  of 
Gogol.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a  description  of  a 
summer's  day  in  Little  Russia,  the  day  of  a 
fair  : 

"  How  intoxicating,  how  rich,  is  a  summer's 
day  in  Little  Russia  !  How  overwhelmingly  hot 
are  those  hours  of  noonday  silence  and  haze ! 
Like  a  boundless  azure  sea,  the  dome  of  the  sky, 
bending  as  though  with  passion  over  the  world, 
seems  to  have  fallen  asleep,  all  drowned  in  soft- 
ness, and  clasps  and  caresses  the  beautiful  earth 
with  a  celestial  embrace.  There  is  no  cloud  in  the 
sky ;  and  the  stream  is  silent.  Everything  is  as 
if  it  were  dead  ;  only  aloft  in  the  deeps  of  the 
sky  a  lark  quivers,  and  its  silvery  song  echoes 
down  the  vault  of  heaven,  and  reaches  the  love- 
sick earth.  And  from  time  to  time  the  cry  of 
the  seagull  or  the  clear  call  of  the  quail  is  heard 
in  the  plain. 

"  Lazily  and  thoughtlessly,  as  though  they 
were  idling  vaguely,  stand  the  shady  oaks ; 
and  the  blinding  rays  of  the  sun  light  up 
the  picturesque  masses  of  foliage,  while  the  rest 
of  the  tree  is  in  a  shadow  dark  as  night,  and 
only  when  the  wind  rises,  a  flash  of  gold  trembles 
across  it. 

*'  Like    emeralds,   topazes    and    amethysts,  the 

50 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

diaphanous  insects  flutter  in  the  many-coloured 
fruit  gardens,  which  are  shaded  by  stately 
sun-flowers.  Grey  haycocks  and  golden  sheaves 
of  corn  stand  in  rows  along  the  field  like 
hillocks  on  the  immense  expanse.  Broad  boughs 
bend  under  their  load  of  cherries,  plums,  apples, 
and  pears.  The  sky  is  the  transparent  mirror 
of  the  day,  and  so  is  the  river,  with  its  high 
green  frame  of  trees.  .  .  .  How  luscious  and  how 
soft  is  the  summer  in  Little  Russia ! 

"  It  was  just  such  a  hot  day  in  August 
1 8 — ,  when  the  road,  ten  versts  from  the  little 
town  of  Sorochinetz,  was  seething  with  people 
hurrying  from  all  the  farms,  far  and  near,  to  the 
fair.  With  the  break  of  day  an  endless  chain  ot 
waggons  laboured  along,  carrying  salt  and  fish. 
Mountains  of  pots  wrapped  in  hay  moved  slowly 
on  as  if  they  were  weary  of  being  cut  off  from 
the  sunshine.  Only  here  and  there  some  brightly- 
painted  soup  tureen  or  earthenware  saucepan 
proudly  emerged  on  the  tilt  of  the  high-heaped 
waggon,  and  attracted  the  eyes  of  lovers  of 
finery ;  many  passers-by  looked  with  envy  on 
the  tall  potter,  the  owner  of  all  these  treasures, 
who  with  slow  steps  walked  beside  his  goods." 

Why  are  we  never  told  of  these  azure  Russian 
days,  of  these  laden  fruit-trees  and  jewelled 
insects  ? 

In  1832,  Gogol  published  a  continuation  of 
this  series,  entitled  Stories  of  Mirgorod,  This 
collection  contains  the  masterpieces  of  the  roman- 

51 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

tic,  and  the  fantastic  side  of  Gogol's  genius.  His 
highest  effort  in  the  romantic  province  is  the 
historical  history  of  Taras  Bulba,  which  is  a  prose 
epic.  It  is  the  tale  of  an  old  Cossack  chieftain 
whose  two  sons,  Ostap  and  Andrii,  are  brought 
up  in  the  Zaporozhian  settlement  of  the  Cossacks, 
and  trained  as  warriors  to  fight  the  Poles.  They 
lay  siege  to  the  Polish  city  of  Dubno,  and  starve 
the  city.  Andrii,  the  younger  son,  discovers  that 
a  girl  whom  he  had  loved  at  Kiev,  before  his 
Cossack  training,  is  shut  up  in  the  city.  The 
girl's  servant  leads  him  into  Dubno  by  an  under- 
ground passage.  Andrii  meets  his  lady-love  and 
abandons  the  Cossack  cause,  saying  that  his 
fatherland  and  his  country  is  there  where  his 
heart  is. 

In  the  meantime  the  Polish  troops  arrive, 
reinforce  the  beleagured  garrison ;  Andrii  is  for 
ever  lost  to  Cossack  chivalry,  and  his  country 
and  his  father's  house  shall  know  him  no  more. 
News  then  comes  that  in  the  absence  of  the 
Cossacks  from  their  camp  in  the  Ukraine,  the 
Tartars  have  plundered  it.  So  they  send  half 
their  army  to  defend  it,  while  half  of  it  remains 
in  front  of  the  besieged  city.  The  Poles  attack 
the  Cossacks  who  are  left. 

There  is  a  terrific  battle,  in  which  Andrii  fights 
against  the  Cossacks.  He  is  taken  prisoner  by 
his    own    father,  who   bids    him    dismount.     He 

52 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF   PEOPLE 

dismounts  obediently,  and  his  father  addresses 
him  thus :  "  I  begot  you,  and  now  I  shall  kill 
you."     And  he  shoots  him  dead. 

Immediately  after  this  incident  Taras  Bulba 
and  his  elder  son,  Ostap,  are  attacked  by  the 
enemy.  Ostap,  after  inflicting  deadly  losses  on  the 
enemy,  is  separated  from  his  father, — who  falls  in 
a  swoon,  and  owing  to  this  escapes, — and  taken 
prisoner.  Ostap  is  taken  to  the  city  and  tortured 
to  death.  In  the  extremity  of  his  torment,  after 
having  endured  the  long  agonies  without  a 
groan,  he  cries  out :  *'  Father,  do  you  hear  me  ?  " 
And  from  the  crowd  a  terrible  voice  is  heard 
answering :  "  I  hear  !  "  Later,  Taras  raises  an 
army  of  Cossacks  to  avenge  the  death  of  his 
son,  and  lays  waste  the  country ;  but  at  the  end 
he  is  caught  and  put  to  death  by  the  Poles. 

This  story  is  told  with  epic  breadth  and  sim- 
plicity ;  the  figure  of  the  old  warrior  is  Homeric, 
and  Homeric  also  is  the  character  of  the  young 
traitor  Andrii,  who,  although  he  betrays  his  own 
people,  never  loses  sympathy,  so  strong  is  the 
impression  you  receive  of  his  brilliance,  his  dash, 
and  his  courage. 

In  the  domain  of  fantasy,  Gogol's  masterpiece 
is  to  be  found  in  this  same  collection.  It  is 
called  Viy.  It  is  the  story  of  a  beautiful  lady 
who  is  a  witch.  She  casts  her  spell  on  a  student 
in  theology,  and  when  she  dies,  her  dying  will  is 

53 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

that  he  shall  spend  three  nights  in  reading 
prayers  over  her  body,  in  the  church  where  her 
coffin  lies.  During  his  watch  on  the  first  night, 
the  dead  maiden  rises  from  her  coffin,  and  watches 
him  with  glassy,  opaque  eyes.  He  hears  the 
flapping  of  the  wings  of  innumerable  birds,  and 
in  the  morning  is  found  half  dead  from  terror. 
He  attempts  to  avoid  the  ordeal  on  the  second 
night,  but  the  girl's  father,  an  old  Cossack,  forces 
him  to  carry  out  his  daughter's  behest,  and  three 
nights  are  spent  by  the  student  in  terrible  conflict 
with  the  witch.  On  the  third  night  he  dies. 
The  great  quality  of  this  story  is  the  atmosphere 
of  overmastering  terror  that  it  creates. 

With  these  two  stories,  Taras  Btilba  and  Viy^ 
Gogol  took  leave  of  Romanticism  and  Fantasy, 
and  started  on  the  path  of  Realism.  In  this 
province  he  was  what  the  Germans  call  a  bahn- 
brecher^  and  he  discovered  a  new  kingdom.  It 
may  be  noticed  that  Gogol,  roughly  speaking, 
began  where  Dickens  ended ;  that  is  to  say,  he 
wrote  his  Tale  of  Two  Cities  first,  and  his  Pick- 
wick last.  But  already  in  this  collection  of 
Mirgorod  tales  there  are  two  stories  in  the 
humorous  realistic  vein,  which  Gogol  never  ex- 
celled ;  one  is  called  Old-fashioned  Landoivners^ 
and  the  other  Hozv  Ivan  Ivanovitch  quarrelled 
with  Ivan  Nikiforovitch. 

Old-fashioned  Landowners   is  a  simple  story. 
54 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

It  is  about  an  old  couple  who  lived  in  a  low- 
roofed  little  house,  with  a  verandah  of  blackened 
tree-trunks,  in  the  midst  of  a  garden  of  dwarfed 
fruit-trees  covered  with  cherries  and  plums.  The 
couple,  Athanasii  Ivanovitch  and  his  wife  Pulcheria 
Ivanovna,  are  old.  He  is  sixty,  she  is  fifty-five. 
It  is  the  story  of  Philemon  and  Baucis.  Nothing 
happens  in  it,  except  that  we  are  introduced  to 
these  charming,  kind,  and  hospitable  people ;  that 
Pulcheria  dies,  and  that  after  her  death  everything 
in  the  house  becomes  untidy  and  slovenly,  be- 
cause Athanasii  cannot  live  without  her ;  and 
after  five  years  he  follows  her  to  the  grave,  and 
is  buried  beside  her.  There  is  nothing  in  the 
story,  and  there  is  everything.  It  is  amusing, 
charming,  and  infinitely  pathetic.  Some  of  the 
touches  of  description  remind  one  strongly  of 
Dickens.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a  description  of  the 
doors  of  the  house  where  the  old  couple  lived : 

"  The  most  remarkable  thing  about  the  house 
was  the  creaking  of  the  doors.  As  soon  as  day 
broke,  the  singing  of  these  doors  was  heard 
throughout  the  whole  house.  I  cannot  say  why 
they  made  the  noise :  either  it  was  the  rusty 
hinges,  or  else  the  workman  who  made  them  hid 
some  secret  in  them  ;  but  the  remarkable  thing 
was  that  each  door  had  its  own  special  note. 
The  door  going  into  the  bedroom  sang  in  a 
delicate  treble ;  the  door  going  into  the  dining- 

55 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

room  had  a  hoarse  bass  note ;  but  that  which  led 
into  the  front  hall  made  a  strange  trembling, 
groaning  noise,  so  that  if  you  listened  to  it  in- 
tently you  heard  it  distinctly  saying,  '  Batiushka, 
I  am  so  cold  ! '  " 

The  story  of  the  two  Ivans  is  irresistibly  funny. 
The  two  Ivans  were  neighbours ;  one  of  them 
was  a  widower  and  the  other  a  bachelor.  They 
were  the  greatest  friends.  Never  a  day  passed 
without  their  seeing  each  other,  and  their  greatest 
pleasure  was  to  entertain  each  other  at  big, 
Dickens-like  meals.  But  one  day  they  quarrelled 
about  a  gun,  and  Ivan  Nikiforovitch  called  Ivan 
Ivanovitch  a  goose.  After  this  they  would  not 
see  each  other,  and  their  relations  were  broken 
off.  Hitherto,  Ivan  Nikiforovitch  and  Ivan 
Ivanovitch  had  sent  every  day  to  inquire  about 
each  other's  health,  had  conversed  together  from 
their  balconies,  and  had  said  charming  things 
to  each  other.  On  Sundays  they  had  gone  to 
church  arm  in  arm,  and  outdone  each  other  in 
mutual  civilities ;  but  now  they  would  not  look 
at  each  other. 

At  length  the  quarrel  went  so  far  that  Ivan 
Ivanovitch  lodged  a  complaint  against  Ivan 
Nikiforovitch,  saying  that  the  latter  had  inflicted 
a  deadly  insult  on  his  personal  honour,  firstly 
by  calling  him  a  goose,  secondly  by  building  a 
goose-shed  opposite    his   porch,   and   thirdly   by 

56 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

cherishing  a  design  to  burn  his  house  down. 
Ivan  Nikiforovitch  lodged  a  similar  petition 
against  Ivan  Ivanovitch.  As  bad  luck  would 
have  it,  Ivan  Ivanovitch's  brown  sow  ate  Ivan 
Nikiforovitch's  petition,  and  this,  of  course,  made 
the  quarrel  worse. 

At  last  a  common  friend  of  the  pair  attempts 
to  bring  about  a  reconciliation,  and  asks  the  two 
enemies  to  dinner.  After  much  persuasion  they 
consent  to  meet.  They  go  to  the  dinner,  where  a 
large  company  is  assembled ;  both  Ivans  eat 
their  meal  without  glancing  at  each  other,  and  as 
soon  as  the  dinner  is  over  they  rise  from  their 
seats  and  make  ready  to  go.  At  this  moment 
they  are  surrounded  on  all  sides,  and  are  adjured 
by  the  company  to  forget  their  quarrel.  Each 
says  that  he  was  innocent  of  any  evil  design, 
and  the  reconciliation  is  within  an  ace  of  being 
effected  when,  unfortunately,  Ivan  Nikiforovitch 
says  to  Ivan  Ivanovitch :  "  Permit  me  to  observe, 
in  a  friendly  manner,  that  you  took  offence 
because  I  called  you  a  goose."  As  soon  as  the 
fatal  word  "  goose  "  is  uttered,  all  reconciliation  is 
out  of  the  question,  and  the  quarrel  continues  to 
the  end  of  their  lives. 

In  1835,  Gogol  retired  definitely  from  the 
public  service.  At  this  point  of  his  career  he 
wrote  a  number  of  stories  and  comedies,  of  a 
varied    nature,  which    he    collected   later  in  two 

57 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

volumes,  Arabesques^  1834,  and  Tales^  1836.  It 
was  the  dawn  of  his  realistic  phase,  although  he 
still  indulged  from  time  to  time  in  the  fantastic, 
as  in  the  grotesque  stories.  The  Nose — the  tale  of 
a  nose  which  gets  lost  and  wanders  about — and 
The  Coach.  But  the  most  remarkable  of  these 
stories  is  The  Overcoat,  which  is  the  highest 
example  of  Gogol's  pathos,  and  contains  in 
embryo  all  the  qualities  of  vivid  realism  which  he 
was  to  develop  later.  It  is  the  story  of  a  clerk 
who  has  a  passion  for  copying,  and  to  whom 
caligraphy  is  a  fine  art.  He  is  never  warm 
enough ;  he  is  always  shivering.  The  ambition, 
the  dream  of  his  life,  is  to  have  a  warm  overcoat. 
After  years  of  privation  he  saves  up  the  sum 
necessary  to  realise  his  dream  and  buy  a  new 
overcoat ;  but  on  the  first  day  that  he  wears  it,  the 
coat  is  stolen  from  him. 

The  police,  to  whom  he  applies  after  the  theft, 
laugh  at  him,  and  the  clerk  falls  into  a  black 
melancholy.  He  dies  unnoticed  and'obscure,  and 
his  ghost  haunts  the  squalid  streets  where  he  was 
wont  to  walk. 

Nearly  half  of  modern  Russian  literature 
descends  directly  from  this  story.  The  figure  of 
this  clerk  and  the  way  he  is  treated  by  the  author  is 
the  first  portrait  of  an  endless  gallery  of  the  failures 
of  this  world,  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  a  social 
system  :  grotesque  figures,  comic,  pathetic,  with  a 

58 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

touch  of  tragedy  in  them,  which,  since  they  are 
handled  by  their  creator  with  a  kindly  sympathy, 
and  never  with  cruelty  or  disdain,  win  our  sym- 
pathy and  live  in  our  hearts  and  our  affections. 

During  this  same  period  Gogol  wrote  several 
plays,  among  which  the  masterpiece  is  The 
Inspector.  This  play,  which  is  still  immensely 
popular  in  Russia,  and  draws  crowded  houses 
on  Sundays  and  holidays,  is  a  good-humoured, 
scathing  satire  on  the  Russian  Bureaucracy.  As 
a  translation  of  this  play  is  easily  to  be  obtained, 
and  as  it  has  been  performed  in  London  by  the 
Stage  Society,  I  need  not  dwell  on  it  here,  except 
to  mention  for  those  who  are  unacquainted  with 
it,  that  the  subject  of  the  play  is  a  misunderstand- 
ing which  arises  from  a  traveller  being  mistaken 
for  a  government  inspector  who  is  expected  to 
arrive  incognito  in  a  provincial  town.  A  European 
critic  in  reading  or  seeing  this  play  is  sometimes 
surprised  and  unreasonably  struck  by  the  universal 
dishonesty  of  almost  every  single  character  in  the 
play.  For  instance,  one  of  the  characters  says  to 
another :  "  You  are  stealing  above  your  rank." 
One  should  remember,  however,  that  in  a  transla- 
tion it  is  impossible  not  to  lose  something  of  the 
good-humour  and  the  comic  spirit  of  which  the 
play  is  full.  It  has  often  been  a  matter  of  sur- 
prise that  this  play,  at  the  time  when  Gogol  wrote 
it,  should   have    been   passed  by   the   censorship. 

59 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

The  reason  of  this  is  that  Gogol  had  for  censor 
the  Emperor  of  Russia  himself,  who  read  the  play, 
was  extremely  amused  by  it,  commanded  its 
immediate  performance,  was  present  at  the  first 
night,  and  led  the  applause. 

Hlestakov,  the  hero  of  The  Inspector',  is  one  of 
the  most  natural  and  magnificent  liars  in  literature. 
Gogol  himself,  in  his  stage  directions,  describes 
him  as  a  man  "  without  a  Tsar  in  his  head," — a 
man  who  speaks  and  acts  without  the  slightest 
reflection,  and  who  is  not  capable  of  consecutive 
thought,  or  of  fixing  his  attention  for  more  than  a 
moment  on  any  single  idea. 

In  1836,  Gogol  left  Russia  and  settled  in 
Rome.  He  had  been  working  for  some  time  at 
another  book,  which  he  intended  should  be  his 
masterpiece,  a  book  in  which  he  intended  to  say 
everything,  and  express  the  whole  of  his  message. 
Gogol  was  possessed  by  this  idea.  The  book  was 
to  be  divided  into  three  parts.  The  first  part 
appeared  in  1842,  the  second  part,  which  was 
never  finished,  Gogol  threw  in  the  fire  in  a  fit  of 
despair.  It  was,  however,  subsequently  printed 
from  an  incomplete  manuscript  which  had  escaped 
his  notice.  The  third  part  was  never  written. 
As  it  is,  the  first  fragment  of  Gogol's  great  ambi- 
tion remains  his  masterpiece,  and  the  book  by 
which  he  is  best  known.  It  is  called  Dead  Souls. 
The  hero  of  this  book  is  a  man  called  Chichikov. 

60 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF   PEOPLE 

He  has  hit  on  an  idea  by  which  he  can  make 
money  by  dishonest  means.  Like  all  great  ideas, 
it  is  simple.  At  the  time  at  which  the  book  was 
written  the  serfs  in  Russia  had  not  yet  been 
emancipated.  They  were  called  "  souls,"  and 
every  landlord  possessed  so  many  "  souls."  A 
revision  of  the  list  of  peasants  took  place  every 
ten  years,  and  the  landlord  had  to  pay  a  poll- 
tax  for  the  souls  that  had  died  during  that  period, 
that  is  to  say,  for  the  men  ;  women  and  children 
did  not  count.  Between  the  periods  of  revision 
nobody  looked  at  the  lists.  If  there  was  any 
epidemic  in  the  village  the  landlord  lost  heavily, 
as  he  had  to  continue  paying  a  tax  for  the 
"  souls  "  who  were  dead. 

Chichikov's  idea  was  to  take  these  "  dead  souls  " 
from  the  landlords,  and  pay  the  poll-tax,  for  them. 
The  landlord  would  be  only  too  pleased  to  get 
rid  of  a  property  which  was  fictitious,  and  a  tax 
which  was  only  too  real.  Chichikov  could  then 
register  his  purchases  with  all  due  formality,  for 
it  would  never  occur  to  a  tribunal  to  think  that 
he  was  asking  them  to  legalise  a  sale  of  dead 
men ;  he  could  thus  take  the  documents  to  a 
bank  at  St.  Petersburg  or  at  Moscow,  and  mort- 
gage the  "  souls,"  which  he  represented  as  living 
in  some  desert  place  in  the  Crimea,  at  one  hundred 
roubles  apiece,  and  then  be  rich  enough  to  buy 
living  "  souls  "  of  his  own. 

6i 


LANDMARKS  LN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Chichikov  travelled  all  over  Russia  in  search 
of  "  dead  souls."  The  book  tells  us  the  adven- 
tures he  met  with ;  and  the  scheme  is  particularly- 
advantageous  to  the  author,  because  it  not  only 
enables  him  to  introduce  us  to  a  variety  of  types, 
but  the  transaction  itself,  the  manner  in  which 
men  behave  when  faced  by  the  proposition,  throws 
a  searchlight  on  their  characters.  Chichikov  starts 
from  a  large  provincial  town,  which  he  makes  his 
base,  and  thence  explores  the  country  ;  the  success 
or  failure  of  his  transactions  forms  the  substance 
of  the  book.  Sometimes  he  is  successful,  some- 
times the  system  breaks  down  because  the  people 
in  the  country  want  to  know  the  market  value  of 
the  "  dead  souls  "  in  the  town. 

The  travels  of  Chichikov,  like  those  of  Mr. 
Pickwick,  form  a  kind  of  Odyssey.  The  types 
he  introduces  us  to  are  extraordinarily  comic ; 
there  are  fools  who  give  their  "  souls  "  for  nothing, 
and  misers  who  demand  an  exorbitant  price  for 
them.  But  sometimes  Chichikov  meets  with 
people  who  are  as  clever  as  himself,  and  who 
outwit  him.  One  of  the  most  amusing  episodes 
is  that  where  he  comes  across  a  suspicious  old 
woman  called  Korobotchka.  Chichikov,  after 
arriving  at  her  house  late  at  night,  and  having 
spent  the  night  there,  begins  his  business  transac- 
tions cautiously  and  tentatively.  The  old  woman 
at  first  thinks  he  has  come  to  sell  her  tea,  or  that 

62 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF   PEOPLE 

he  has  come  to  buy  honey.  Then  Chichikov 
comes  to  the  point,  and  asks  her  if  any  peasants 
have  died  on  her  land.  She  says  eighteen.  He 
then  asks  her  to  sell  them  to  him,  saying  that  he 
will  give  her  money  for  them.  She  asks  if  he 
wishes  to  dig  them  out  of  the  ground.  He 
explains  that  the  transaction  would  only  take 
place  upon  paper.  She  asks  him  why  he 
wants  to  do  this.  That,  he  answers,  is  his  own 
affair. 

"  But  they  are  dead,"  she  says. 

"  Whoever  said  they  were  alive  ? "  asked 
Chichikov.  "  It  is  a  loss  to  you  that  they  are 
dead.  You  pay  for  them,  and  I  will  now  save 
you  the  trouble  and  the  expense,  and  not  only 
save  you  this,  but  give  you  fifteen  roubles  into  the 
bargain.      Is  it  clear  now  ?  " 

"  I  really  can't  say,"  the  old  woman  replies. 
"  You  see  I  never  before  sold  dead  *  souls.'  "  And 
she  keeps  on  repeating :  "  What  bothers  me  is 
that  they  are  dead!' 

Chichikov  again  explains  to  her  that  she  has 
to  pay  a  tax  on  them  just  as  though  they  were 
alive. 

"Don't  talk  of  it!"  she  says.  "Only  a 
week  ago  I  had  to  pay  one  hundred  and  fifty 
roubles." 

Chichikov  again  explains  to  her  how  advan- 
tageous it  would  be  for  her  to  get  them   off  her 

63 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

hands,  upon  which  she  answers  that  she  has 
never  had  occasion  to  sell  dead  souls ;  if  they 
were  alive,  on  the  other  hand,  she  would  have 
been  delighted  to  do  it. 

"  But  I  don't  want  live  ones !  I  want  dead 
ones,"  answers  Chichikov. 

"  I  am  afraid,"  she  says,  "  that  I  might  lose 
over  the  bargain — that  you  may  be  deceiving 
me. 

Chichikov  explains  the  whole  thing  over  again, 
offering  her  fifteen  roubles,  and  showing  her  the 
money ;  upon  which  she  says  she  would  like  to 
wait  a  little,  to  find  out  what  they  are  really 
worth. 

"  But  who  on  earth  will  buy  them  from  you  ?  " 
asks  Chichikov. 

'^  They  might  be  useful  on  the  estate,"  says 
the  old  woman. 

"  How  can  you  use  dead  souls  on  the  estate  ?  " 
asks  Chichikov. 

Korobotchka  suggests  that  she  would  rather 
sell  him  some  hemp,  and  Chichikov  loses  his 
temper. 

Equally  amusing  are  Chichikov's  adventures 
with  the  miser  Plushkin,  Nozdref,  a  swaggering 
drunkard,  and  Manilov,  who  is  simply  a  fool. 
But  when  all  is  said  and  done,  the  most  amusing 
person  in  the  book  is  Chichikov  himself. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  volume,  Gogol  makes 

64 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

a  defence  of  his  hero.  After  having  described 
the  circumstances  of  his  youth,  his  surroundings, 
and  all  the  influences  which  made  him  what  he 
was,  the  author  asks  :  "  Who  is  he  ?  "  And  the 
answer  he  gives  himself  is  :  "  Of  course  a  rascal : 
but  why  a  rascal  ?  "      He  continues  : 

"  Why  should  we  be  so  severe  on  others  ?  We 
have  no  rascals  among  us  now,  we  have  only 
well-thinking,  pleasant  people  ;  we  have,  it  is  true, 
two  or  three  men  \vho  have  enjoyed  the  shame  of 
being  thrashed  in  public,  and  even  these  speak  of 
virtue.  It  would  be  more  just  to  call  him  a  man 
who  acquires ;  it  is  the  passion  for  gain  that  is 
to  blame  for  everything.  This  passion  is  the 
cause  of  deeds  which  the  world  characterises  as 
ugly.  It  is  true  that  in  such  a  character  there 
is  perhaps  something  repulsive.  But  the  same 
reader  who  in  real  Hfe  will  be  friends  with  such 
a  man,  who  will  dine  with  him,  and  pass  the 
time  pleasantly  with  him,  will  look  askance  at 
the  same  character  should  he  meet  with  him 
as  the  hero  of  a  book  or  of  a  poem.  That 
man  is  wise  who  is  not  offended  by  any  char- 
acter, but  is  able  to  look  within  it,  and  to 
trace  the  development  of  nature  to  its  first 
causes.  Everything  in  man  changes  rapidly. 
You  have  scarcely  time  to  look  round,  before 
inside  the  man's  heart  a  hateful  worm  has  been 
born  which  absorbs  the  vital  sap  of  his  nature. 
And  it  often  happens  that  not  only  a  great  passion, 
but   some    ridiculous   whim    for   a   trivial   object, 

E  65 


LANDMARKS  L\  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

grows  in  a  man  who  was  destined  to  better 
deeds,  and  causes  him  to  forget  his  high  and 
sacred  duty,  and  to  mistake  the  most  miserable 
trifle  for  what  is  most  exalted  and  most  holy.  The 
passions  of  mankind  are  as  countless  as  the  sands 
of  the  sea,  and  each  of  them  is  different  from  the 
others ;  and  all  of  them,  mean  or  beautiful,  start 
by  being  subject  to  man,  and  afterwards  become 
his  most  inexorable  master.  Happy  is  the  man 
who  has  chosen  for  himself  a  higher  passion  .  .  . 
but  there  are  passions  which  are  not  chosen  by 
man :  they  are  with  him  from  the  moment  of  his 
birth,  and  strength  is  not  given  him  to  free  himself 
from  them.  These  passions  are  ordered  according 
to  a  high  plan,  and  there  is  something  in  them 
which  eternally  and  incessantly  summons  him, 
and  which  lasts  as  long  as  life  lasts.  They  have 
a  great  work  to  accomplish ;  whether  they  be 
sombre  or  whether  they  be  bright,  their  purpose 
is  to  work  for  an  ultimate  good  which  is  beyond 
the  ken  of  man.  And  perhaps  in  this  same 
Chichikov  the  ruling  passion  which  governs  him 
is  not  of  his  choosing,  and  in  his  cold  existence 
there  may  be  something  which  will  one  day  cause 
us  to  humble  ourselves  on  our  knees  and  in  the 
dust  before  the  Divine  wisdom." 

I  quote  this  passage  at  length  because  it  not 
only  explains  the  point  of  view  of  Gogol  towards 
his  creation,  but  also  that  which  nearly  all 
Russian  authors  and  novelists  hold  with  regard 
to  mankind  in  general.     Gogol's  Dead  Souls  is  an 

66 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

extremely  funny  book ;  it  is  full  of  delightful 
situations,  comic  characters  and  situations.  At 
the  same  time  it  has  often  struck  people  as 
being  a  sad  book.  When  Gogol  read  out  to 
Pushkin  the  first  chapter,  Pushkin,  who  at  other 
times  had  always  laughed  when  Gogol  read  his 
work  to  him,  became  sadder  and  sadder,  and  said 
when  Gogol  had  reached  the  end  :  "  What  a  sad 
country  Russia  is  !  " 

It  is  true,  as  Gogol  himself  says  at  the  end  of 
the  first  volume  of  Dead  Souls,  that  there  is  prob- 
ably not  one  of  his  readers  who,  after  an  honest 
self-examination,  will  not  wonder  whether  he  has 
not  something  of  Chichikov  in  himself  And  if 
at  such  a  moment  such  a  man  should  meet  an 
acquaintance  in  the  street,  whose  rank  is  neither 
too  exalted  for  criticism  nor  too  obscure  for  notice, 
he  will  nudge  his  companion,  and  say  with  a 
chuckle  :  "  There  goes  Chichikov  !  "  Perhaps 
every  Russian  feels  that  there  is  something  of 
Chichikov  in  him,  and  Chichikov  is  a  rascal,  and 
most  of  the  other  characters  in  Dead  Souls  are 
rascals  also;  people  who  try  to  cheat  their  neigh- 
bours, and  feel  no  moral  scruples  or  remorse  after 
they  have  done  so.  But  in  spite  of  all  this,  the 
impression  that  remains  with  one  after  reading 
the  book  is  not  one  of  bitterness  or  of  melancholy. 
For  in  all  the  characters  there  is  a  vast  amount 
of  good-nature  and  of  humanity.     Also,  as  Gogol 

67 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

has  pointed  out  in  the  passage  quoted  above,  the 
peculiar  blend  of  faults  and  qualities  on  which 
moralists  may  be  severe,  may  be  a  special  part  of 
the  Divine  scheme. 

However  this  may  be,  what  strikes  the  casual 
student  most  when  he  has  read  Dead  Souls,  is  that 
Gogol  is  the  only  Russian  author  who  has  given 
us  in  literature  the  universal  type  of  Russian ; 
the  Russian  "  man  in  the  street."  Tolstoy 
has  depicted  the  upper  classes.  Dostoievsky  has 
reached  the  innermost  depths  of  the  Russian  soul 
in  its  extremest  anguish  and  at  its  highest  pitch. 
Tourgeniev  has  fixed  on  the  canvas  several  striking 
portraits,  which  suffer  from  the  defect  either  of 
being  caricatures,  or  of  being  too  deeply  dyed 
in  the  writer's  pessimism  and  self-consciousness. 
Gorky  has  painted  in  lurid  colours  one  side 
of  the  common  people.  Andreev  has  given 
us  the  nightmares  of  the  younger  genera- 
tion. Chekov  has  depicted  the  pessimism  and 
the  ineffectiveness  of  the  "  intelligenzia."  ^  But 
nobody  except  Gogol  has  given  us  the  ordinary 
cheerful  Russian  man  in  the  street,  with  his  crying 
faults,  his  attractive  good  qualities,  and  his  over- 
flowing human  nature.  In  fact,  it  is  the  work 
of  Gogol  that  explains  the  attraction  which  the 
Russian  character  and  the  Russian  country 
exercise  over  people  who  have  come  beneath  their 

^  The  highly  educated  professional  middle  class. 

6Z 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

influence.  At  first  sight  the  thing  seems 
inexplicable.  The  country  seems  ugly,  dreary 
and  monotonous,  without  art,  without  beauty  and 
without  brilliance ;  the  climate  is  either  fiercely 
cold  and  damp,  or  excruciatingly  dry  and  hot; 
the  people  are  slow  and  heavy ;  there  is  a 
vast  amount  of  dirt,  dust,  disorder,  untidiness, 
slovenliness,  squalor,  and  sordidness  everywhere ; 
and  yet  in  spite  of  all  this,  even  a  foreigner  who 
has  lived  in  Russia  (not  to  speak  of  the  Russians 
themselves),  and  who  has  once  come  in  contact 
with  its  people,  can  never  be  quite  free  from  its 
over- mastering  charm,  and  the  secret  fascination 
of  the  country. 

In  another  passage  towards  the  end  of  Dead 
SoulSj  Gogol  writes  about  this  very  thing  as 
follows : 

"  Russia "  (he  writes),  "  I  see  you  from  the 
beautiful  '  far  away '  where  I  am.  Everything  in 
you  is  miserable,  disordered  and  inhospitable. 
There  are  no  emphatic  miracles  of  Nature  to 
startle  the  eye,  graced  with  equally  startling 
miracles  of  art.  There  are  no  towns  with  high, 
many-windowed  castles  perched  on  the  top  of 
crags ;  there  are  no  picturesque  trees,  no  ivy- 
covered  houses  beside  the  ceaseless  thunder 
and  foam  of  waterfalls.  One  never  strains 
one's  neck  back  to  look  at  the  piled-up  rocky 
crags  soaring  endlessly  into  the  sky.  There 
never   shines,   through    dark    and    broken   arches 

69 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

overgrown  with  grapes,  ivy,  and  a  million  wild 
roses, — there  never  shines,  I  say,  from  afar  the 
eternal  line  of  gleaming  mountains  standing  out 
against  transparent  and  silver  skies.  Every- 
thing in  you  is  open  and  desert  and  level ; 
like  dots,  your  squatting  towns  lie  almost  un- 
observed in  the  midst  of  the  plains.  There  is 
nothing  to  flatter  or  to  charm  the  eye.  What  then 
is  the  secret  and  incomprehensible  power  which 
lies  hidden  in  you  ?  Why  does  your  aching 
melancholy  song,  which  wanders  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  you,  from  sea  to  sea,  sound 
and  echo  unceasingly  in  one's  ears  ?  What  is  there 
in  this  song?  What  is  there  that  calls  and  sobs 
and  captures  the  heart?  What  are  the  sounds 
which  hurt  as  they  kiss,  pierce  my  very  inmost 
soul  and  flood  my  heart?  Russia,  what  do  you 
want  of  me?  What  inexplicable  bond  is  there 
between  you  and  me  ?  " 

Gogol  does  not  answer  the  question,  and  if  he 
cannot  put  his  finger  on  the  secret  it  would  be 
difficult  for  any  one  else  to  do  so.  But  although 
he  does  not  answer  the  question  directly,  he  does 
so  indirectly  by  his  works.  Any  one  who  reads 
Gogol's  early  stories,  even  Dead  Souls,  will 
•understand  the  inexplicable  fascination  hidden 
in  a  country  which  seems  at  first  sight  so 
devoid  of  outward  and  superficial  attraction,  and 
in  a  people  whose  defects  are  so  obvious  and 
unconcealed.     The  charm  of  Russian  life  lies  in 

70 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

its  essential  goodness  of  heart,  and  in  its  absence 
of  hypocrisy,  and  it  is  owing  to  this  absence  of 
hypocrisy  that  the  faults  of  the  Russian  character 
are  so  easy  to  detect.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
in  Gogol's  realistic  and  satirical  work,  as  in  The 
Inspector  and  Dead  Sou/s,  the  characters  startle  the 
foreign  observer  by  their  frank  and  almost  uni- 
versal dishonesty.  The  truth  is  that  they  do  not 
take  the  trouble  to  conceal  their  shortcomings ; 
they  are  indulgent  to  the  failings  of  others,  and 
not  only  expect  but  know  that  they  will  find  their 
own  faults  treated  with  similar  indulgence. 
Faults,  failings,  and  vices  which  in  Western 
Europe  would  be  regarded  with  uncompromis- 
ing censure  and  merciless  blame,  meet  in 
Russia  either  with  pity  or  good  -  humoured 
indulgence. 

This  happy-go-lucky  element,  the  good-natured 
indulgence  and  scepticism  with  which  Russians 
regard  many  things  which  we  consider  of  grave 
import,  are,  no  doubt,  to  a  great  extent  the  cause 
of  the  evils  which  exist  in  the  administrative 
system  of  the  country — the  cause  of  nearly  all  the 
evils  of  which  Russian  reformers  so  bitterly  com- 
plain. On  the  other  hand,  it  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  this  same  good-humour  and  this 
same  indulgence,  the  results  of  which  in  public 
life  are  slackness,  disorder,  corruption,  irresponsi- 
bility   and    arbitrariness,  in    private  life  produce 

71 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

results  of  a  different  nature,  such  as  pity,  charity, 
hospitality  and  unselfishness ;  for  the  good- 
humour  and  the  good-nature  of  the  Russian  pro- 
ceed directly  from  goodness,  and  from  nothing  else. 

Gogol  never  finished  Dead  Souls,  He  went 
on  working  on  the  second  and  third  parts  of  it 
until  the  end  of  his  life,  in  1852  ;  and  he  twice 
threw  the  work,  when  it  was  completed,  into  the 
fire.  All  we  possess  is  an  incomplete  copy  of  a 
manuscript  of  the  second  part,  which  escaped 
destruction.  He  had  intended  the  second  part  to 
be  more  serious  than  the  first ;  his  ambition  was 
to  work  out  the  moral  regeneration  of  Chichikov, 
and  in  doing  so  to  attain  to  a  full  and  complete 
expression  of  his  ideals  and  his  outlook  on  life. 
The  ambition  pursued  and  persecuted  him  like  a 
feverish  dream,  and  not  being  able  to  realise  it, 
he  turned  back  upon  himself  and  was  driven 
inward.  His  nature  was  religious  to  the  core, 
since  it  was  based  on  a  firm  and  unshaken  belief 
in  Providence  ;  and  there  came  a  time  when  he 
began  to  experience  that  distaste  of  the  world 
which  ultimately  leads  to  a  man  becoming  an 
ascetic  and  a  recluse. 

He  lived  in  Rome,  isolated  from  the  world  ;  he 
became  consumed  with  religious  zeal ;  he  preached 
to  his  friends  and  acquaintances  the  Christian 
virtues  of  humility,  resignation  and  charity ; 
he    urged     them    not    to    resist     authority,    but 

72 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF   PEOPLE 

to  become  contrite  Christians.  And  in  order 
that  the  world  should  hear  him,  in  1847  he 
published  passages  from  a  correspondence  with 
friends.  In  these  letters  Gogol  insisted  on 
the  paramount  necessity  of  spiritual  life ;  but 
instead  of  attacking  the  Church  he  defended  it, 
and  preached  submission  both  to  it  and  to  the 
Government. 

The  book  created  a  sensation,  and  raised  a  storm 
of  abuse.  Some  of  the  prominent  Liberals  were 
displeased.  It  was,  of  course,  easy  for  them  to 
attack  Gogol ;  for  here,  they  said,  was  the  man 
who  had,  more  than  any  other,  satirised  and  dis- 
credited the  Russian  Government  and  Russian 
administration,  coming  forward  as  an  apostle 
of  orthodoxy  and  officialdom.  The  intellectual 
world  scorned  him  as  a  mystic,  and  considered 
the  matter  settled  ;  but  if  the  word  "  mystic  "  had 
the  significance  which  these  people  seem  to  have 
attached  to  it,  then  Gogol  was  not  a  mystic. 
There  was  nothing  extravagant  or  uncommon 
in  his  religion.  He  gave  up  writing,  and  devoted 
himself  to  religion  and  good  works ;  but  this  does 
not  constitute  what  the  intellectuals  seem  to  have 
meant  by  mysticism.  Mysticism  with  them  was 
equivalent  to  madness.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
we  mean  by  mysticism  the  transcendent  common 
sense  which  recognises  a  Divine  order  of  things, 
and  the  reality  of  an  invisible  world,  then   Gogol 

73 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

was  a  mystic.  Therefore,  when  Gogol  ceased  to 
write  stories,  he  no  more  became  a  mystic  than 
did  Pascal  when  he  ceased  going  into  society,  or 
than  Racine  did  when  he  ceased  to  write  plays. 
In  the  other  sense  of  the  word  he  was  a  mystic  all 
his  life ;  so  was  Racine. 

At  the  age  of  thirty-three  his  creative  faculties 
had  dried  up,  and  at  the  age  of  forty-three,  in 
February  1852,  he  died  of  typhoid  fever.  The 
place  of  Gogol  in  Russian  literature  is  a  very  high 
one.  Prosper  Merim^e  places  him  among  the 
best  English  humorists.  Gogol's  European  repu- 
tation is  less  great  than  it  should  be,  because 
his  subject-matter  is  more  remote.  But  of  all 
the  Russian  prose  writers  of  the  last  century, 
Gogol  is  perhaps  the  most  national.  His  work 
smells  of  the  soil  of  Russia ;  there  is  nothing 
imitative  or  foreign  about  it.  When  he  published 
The  Inspector,  the  motto  which  he  appended  to  it 
was :  "  If  your  mouth  is  crooked,  don't  blame  the 
looking-glass."  He  was  a  great  humorist.  He 
was  also  a  great  satirist.  He  was  a  penetrating 
but  not  a  pitiless  observer  ;  in  his  fun  and  his 
humour,  there  is  often  a  note  of  sadness,  an  accent 
of  pathos,  and  a  tinge  of  wistful  melancholy. 
His  pathos  and  his  laughter  are  closely  allied  one 
to  another,  but  in  his  sadness  there  is  neither 
bitterness  nor  gloom  ;  there  is  no  shadow  of  the 
powers  of  darkness,  no   breath   of  the  icy  terror 

74 


GOGOL  AND  CHEERFULNESS  OF  PEOPLE 

which  blows  through  the  works  of  Tolstoy ;  there 
is  no  hint  of  the  emptiness  and  the  void,  or  of 
a  fear  of  them.  There  is  nothing  akin  to  despair. 
For  his  whole  outlook  on  life  is  based  on  faith  in 
Providence,  and  the  whole  of  his  morality  consists 
in  Christian  charity,  and  in  submission  to  the 
Divine. 

In  one  of  his  lectures,  Gogol,  speaking  of 
Pushkin,  singles  out,  as  one  of  the  qualities  of 
Russian  literature,  the  pity  for  all  who  are 
unfortunate.  This,  he  says,  is  a  truly  Russian 
characteristic. 

"  Think,"  he  writes,  "  of  that  touching  spectacle 
which  our  people  afford  when  they  visit  the  exiles 
who  are  starting  for  Siberia,  when  every  man 
brings  something,  either  food  or  money,  or  a  kind 
word.  There  is  here  no  hatred  of  the  criminal ; 
no  quixotic  wish  to  make  him  a  hero,  or  to  ask 
for  his  autograph  or  his  portrait,  or  to  regard  him 
as  an  object  of  morbid  curiosity,  as  often  happens 
in  more  civilised  Europe.  Here  there  is  some- 
thing more :  it  is  not  the  desire  to  whitewash 
him,  or  to  deliver  him  from  the  hands  of 
the  law,  but  to  comfort  his  broken  spirit, 
and  to  console  him  as  a  brother  comforts  a 
brother,  or  as  Christ  ordered  us  to  console  each 
other." 

This  sense  of  pity  is  the  greatest  gift  that  the 
Russian  nation  possesses  :  it  is  likewise  the  cardinal 

75 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

factor  of  Russian  literature,  as  well  as  its  most 
precious  asset ;  the  inestimable  legacy  and  contribu- 
tion which  Russian  authors  have  made  to  the  litera- 
ture of  the  world.  It  is  a  thing  which  the  Russians 
and  no  other  people  have  given  us.  There  is  no 
better  way  of  judging  of  this  quality  and  of 
estimating  its  results,  than  to  study  the  works  of 
Russia's  greatest  humorist,  satirist,  and  realist. 
For  if  realism  can  be  so  vivid  without  being  cruel, 
if  satire  can  be  so  cruel  without  being  bitter,  and 
a  sense  of  the  ridiculous  so  broad  and  so  strong 
without  being  ill-natured,  the  soil  of  goodness  out 
of  which  these  things  all  grow  must  indeed  be  rich 
and  deep,  and  the  streams  of  pity  with  which  it 
is  watered  must  indeed  be  plentiful. 


76 


CHAPTER   IV 
TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

THE  eightieth  birthday  of  Count  Tolstoy, 
which  was  celebrated  in  Russia  on  August 
28  (old  style),  1908,  was  closely  followed  by 
the  twenty-fifth  anniversary  of  the  death  of 
Tourgeniev,  who  died  on  September  3,  1883,  at 
the  age  of  sixty-five.  These  two  anniversaries 
followed  close  upon  the  publication  of  a  trans- 
lation into  English  of  the  complete  works  of 
Count  Tolstoy  by  Professor  Wiener;  and  it 
is  not  long  ago  that  a  new  edition  of  the 
complete  works  of  Tourgeniev,  translated  into 
English  by  Mrs.  Garnett,  appeared.  Both  these 
translations  have  been  made  with  great  care,  and 
are  faithful  and  accurate.  Thirty  years  ago  it  is 
certain  that  European  critics,  and  probable  that 
Russian  critics,  would  have  observed,  in  comment- 
ing on  the  concurrence  of  these  two  events,  that 
Tolstoy  and  Tourgeniev  were  the  two  giants  of 
modern  Russian  literature.      Is  the  case  the  same 

77 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

to-day?  Is  it  still  true  that,  in  the  opinion  of 
Russia  and  of  Europe,  the  names  of  Tolstoy  and 
Tourgeniev  stand  pre-eminently  above  all  their 
contemporaries  ? 

With  regard  to  Tolstoy  the  question  can  be 
answered  without  the  slightest  hesitation.  Time, 
which  has  inflicted  such  mournful  damage  on  so 
many  great  reputations  in  the  last  twenty-five 
years,  has  not  only  left  the  fame  of  Tolstoy's 
masterpieces  unimpaired,  but  has  increased  our 
sense  of  their  greatness.  The  question  arises, 
whose  work  forms  the  complement  to  that  of 
Tolstoy,  and  shares  his  undisputed  dominion 
of  modern  Russian  literature?  Is  it  Tour- 
geniev? In  Russia  at  the  present  day  the 
answer  would  be  "  No,"  it  is  not  Tourgeniev. 
And  in  Europe,  students  of  Russian  literature 
who  are  acquainted  with  the  Russian  language 
— as  we  see  in  M.  Emile  Haumant's  study  of 
Tourgeniev's  life  and  work,  and  in  Professor 
Bruckner's  history  of  Russian  literature — would 
also  answer  in  the  negative,  although  their 
denial  would  be  less  emphatic  and  not  perhaps 
unqualified. 

The  other  giant,  the  complement  of  Tolstoy, 
almost  any  Russian  critic  of  the  present  day 
without  hesitation  would  pronounce  to  be  Dos- 
toievsky ;  and  the  foreign  critic  who  is  thoroughly 
acquainted   with   Dostoievsky's  work  cannot  but 

78 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

agree  with  him.  I  propose  to  go  more  fully  into 
the  question  of  the  merits  and  demerits  of  Dos- 
toievsky later  on  ;  but  it  is  impossible  not  to 
mention  him  here,  because  the  very  existence  of 
his  work  powerfully  affects  our  judgment  when 
we  come  to  look  at  that  of  his  contemporaries. 
We  can  no  more  ignore  his  presence  and  his  in- 
fluence than  we  could  ignore  the  presence  of  a 
colossal  fresco  by  Leonardo  da  Vinci  in  a  room 
in  which  there  were  only  two  other  religious 
pictures,  one  by  Rembrandt  and  one  by  Vandyck. 
For  any  one  who  is  familiar  with  Dostoievsky, 
and  has  felt  his  tremendous  influence,  cannot  look 
at  the  work  of  his  contemporaries  with  the  same 
eyes  as  before.  To  such  a  one,  the  rising  of 
Dostoievsky's  red  and  troubled  planet,  while 
causing  the  rays  of  Tourgeniev's  serene  star 
to  pale,  leaves  the  rays  of  Tolstoy's  orb 
undiminished  and  undimmed.  Tolstoy  and 
Dostoievsky  shine  in  the  firmament  of  Rus- 
sian literature  like  two  planets,  one  of  them 
as  radiant  as  the  planet  Jupiter,  the  other 
as  ominous  as  the  planet  Mars.  Beside  either 
of  these  the  light  of  Tourgeniev  twinkles,  pure 
indeed,  and  full  of  pearly  lustre,  like  the 
moon  faintly  seen  in  the  east  at  the  end  of  an 
autumnal  day. 

It    is     rash    to    make    broad     generalisations. 
79 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

They  bring  with  them  a  certain  element  of  exag- 
geration which  must  be  discounted.  Nevertheless 
I  believe  that  I  am  stating  a  fundamental  truth 
in  saying  that  the  Russian  character  can,  roughly 
speaking,  be  divided  into  two  types,  and  these 
two  types  dominate  the  whole  of  Russian  litera- 
ture. The  first  is  that  which  I  shall  call,  for 
want  of  a  better  name,  Lucifer,  the  fallen  angel. 
The  second  type  is  that  of  the  hero  of  all  Russian 
folk-tales,  Ivan  Durak,  Ivan  the  Fool,  or  the 
Little  Fool.  There  are  innumerable  folk-tales  in 
Russian  which  tell  the  adventures  of  Ivan  the 
Fool,  who,  by  his  very  simplicity  and  foolishness, 
outwits  the  wisdom  of  the  world.  This  type 
is  characteristic  of  one  Russian  ideal.  The 
simple  fool  is  venerated  in  Russia  as  some- 
thing holy.  It  is  acknowledged  that  his  childish 
innocence  is  more  precious  than  the  wisdom  of 
the  wise.  Ivan  Durak  may  be  said  to  be  the 
hero  of  all  Dostoievsky's  novels.  He  is  the  aim 
and  ideal  of  Dostoievsky's  life,  an  aim  and  ideal 
which  he  fully  achieves.  He  is  also  the  aim  and 
ideal  of  Tolstoy's  teaching,  but  an  aim  and  ideal 
which  Tolstoy  recommends  to  others  and  only 
partly  achieves  himself. 

The  first  type  I  have  called,  for  want  of  a 
better  name,  since  I  can  find  no  concrete  symbol 
of  it  in  Russian  folk-lore,  Lucifer,  the  fallen  angel. 
This    type   is   the   embodiment  of  stubborn   and 

80 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

obdurate    pride,    the   spirit   which   cannot   bend  ; 
such  is  Milton's  Satan,  with  his 


'Courage  never  to  submit  or  yield, 
And  what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome. 


This  type  is  also  widely  prevalent  in  Russia, 
although  it  cannot  be  said  to  be  a  popular  type, 
embodied,  like  Ivan  the  Fool,  in  a  national  symbol. 
One  of  the  most  striking  instances  of  this,  the 
Lucifer  type,  which  I  have  come  across,  was  a 
peasant  called  Nazarenko,  who  was  a  member  of 
the  first  Duma.  He  was  a  tall,  powerfully  built, 
rugged-looking  man,  spare  and  rather  thin,  with 
clear-cut  prominent  features,  black  penetrating 
eyes,  and  thick  black  tangled  hair.  He  looked 
as  if  he  had  stepped  out  of  a  sacred  picture  by 
Velasquez.  This  man  had  the  pride  of  Lucifer. 
There  was  at  that  time,  in  July  1905,  an  Inter- 
parliamentary Congress  sitting  in  London.  Five 
delegates  of  the  Russian  Duma  were  chosen  to 
represent  Russia.  It  was  proposed  that  Nazarenko 
should  represent  the  peasants.  I  asked  him  once 
if  he  were  going.      He  answered  : 

"  I  shan't  go  unless  I  am  unanimously  chosen 
by  the  others.  I  have  written  down  my  name 
and  asked,  but  I  shall  not  ask  twice.  I  never 
ask  twice  for  anything.  When  I  say  my  prayers, 
I  only  ask  God  once  for  a  thing,  and  if  it  is  not 
granted,  I  never  ask  again.  So  it  is  not  likely 
F  8l 


'^\(oO?^ 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

I  would  ask  my  fellow-men  twice  for  anything. 
I  am  like  that.  I  leave  out  that  passage  in  the 
prayers  about  being  a  miserable  slave.  I  am  not 
a  miserable  slave,  either  of  man  or  of  Heaven." 

Such  a  man  recognises  no  authority,  human 
or  divine.  Indeed  he  not  only  refuses  to  ac- 
knowledge authority,  but  it  will  be  difficult  for 
him  to  admire  or  bow  down  to  any  of  those 
men  or  ideas  which  the  majority  have  agreed 
to  believe  worthy  of  admiration,  praise,  or 
reverence. 

Now,  while  Dostoievsky  is  the  incarnation  of 
the  first  type,  of  Ivan  the  Fool,  Tolstoy  is  the 
incarnation  of  the  second.  It  is  true  that,  at  a 
certain  stage  of  his  career,  Tolstoy  announced 
to  the  world  that  the  ideal  of  Ivan  Durak 
was  the  only  ideal  worth  following.  He  per- 
ceives this  aim  with  clearness,  and,  in  preach- 
ing it,  he  has  made  a  multitude  of  disciples  ;  the 
only  thing  he  has  never  been  able  to  do  is  to 
make  the  supreme  submission,  the  final  surrender, 
and  to  become  the  type  himself. 

We  know  everything  about  Tolstoy,  not  only 
from  the  biographical  writings  of  Fet  and  Behrs, 
but  from  his  own  autobiography,  his  novels,  and 
his  Confession.  He  gives  us  a  panorama  of 
events  down  to  the  smallest  detail  of  his  long 
career,  as  well  as  of  every  phase  of  feeling,  and 

82 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

every  shade  and  mood  of  his  spiritual  existence. 
The  English  reader  who  wishes  to  be  acquainted 
with  all  the  important  facts  of  Tolstoy's  material 
and  spiritual  life  cannot  do  better  than  read  Mr. 
Aylmer  Maude's  Life  of  Tolstoy^  which  com- 
presses into  one  well-planned  and  admirably 
executed  volume  all  that  is  of  interest  during 
the  first  fifty  years  of  Tolstoy's  career.  In 
reading  this  book  a  phrase  of  Tourgeniev's  occurs 
to  one.  "  Man  is  the  same,  from  the  cradle 
to  the  grave."  Tolstoy  had  been  called  incon- 
sistent; but  the  student  of  his  life  and  work,  far 
from  finding  inconsistency,  will  rather  be  struck 
by  the  unvarying  and  obstinate  consistency  of  his 
ideas.  Here,  for  instance,  is  an  event  recorded  in 
Tolstoy's  Confession  (p.  i )  : 

"  I  remember  how,  when  I  was  about  eleven,  a 
boy,  Vladimir  Miliutin,  long  since  dead,  visited 
us  one  Sunday,  and  announced  as  the  latest 
novelty  a  discovery  made  at  his  school.  The 
discovery  was  that  there  is  no  God  at  all,  and  all 
we  are  taught  about  Him  is  a  mere  invention.  I 
remember  how  interested  my  elder  brothers  were 
in  this  news.  They  called  me  to  their  council, 
and  we  all,  I  remember,  became  animated,  and 
accepted  the  news  as  something  very  interesting 
and  fully  possible." 

There  is  already  the  germ  of  the  man  who  was 
afterwards  to  look  with  such  independent  eyes  on 

83 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

the  accepted  beliefs  and  ideas  of  mankind,  to 
play  havoc  with  preconceived  opinions,  and  to 
establish  to  his  own  satisfaction  whether  what 
was  true  for  others  was  true  for  himself  or  not. 
Later  he  says  : 

"  I  was  baptized  and  brought  up  in  the  Orthodox 
Christian  faith.  I  was  taught  it  in  childhood 
and  all  through  my  boyhood  and  youth.  Before 
I  left  the  university,  in  my  second  year,  at  the 
age  of  eighteen,  I  no  longer  believed  anything  I 
had  been  taught."  ^ 

A  Russian  writer,  M.  Kurbski,  describes  how, 
when  he  first  met  Tolstoy,  he  was  overwhelmed 
by  the  look  in  Tolstoy's  eyes.  They  were  more 
than  eyes,  he  said ;  they  were  like  electric  search- 
lights, which  penetrated  into  the  depths  of  your 
mind,  and,  like  a  photographic  lens,  seized  and 
retained  for  ever  a  positive  picture.  In  his 
Childhood  and  Youth,  Tolstoy  gives  us  the  most 
vivid,  the  most  natural,  the  most  sensitive 
picture  of  childhood  and  youth  that  has  ever 
been  penned  by  the  hand  of  man.  And  yet, 
after  reading  it,  one  is  left  half-unconsciously 
with  the  impression  that  the  author  feels  there 
is  something  wrong,  something  unsatisfactory 
behind  it  all. 

Tolstoy  then  passes  on  to  describe  the  life  of  a 

1  Life  of  Tolstoy,  p.  38. 
84 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

grown-up  man,  in  The  Morning  of  a  Landowner, 
in  which  he  tells  how  he  tried  to  work  in  his  own 
home,  on  his  property,  and  to  teach  the  peasants, 
and  how  nothing  came  of  his  experiments.  And 
again  we  have  the  feeling  of  something  unsatis- 
factory, and  something  wanting,  something  towards 
which  the  man  is  straining,  and  which  escapes  him. 

A  little  later,  Tolstoy  goes  to  the  Caucasus,  to 
the  war,  where  life  is  primitive  and  simple,  where 
he  is  nearer  to  nature,  and  where  man  himself  is 
more  natural.  And  then  we  have  The  Cossacks, 
in  which  Tolstoy's  searchlights  are  thrown  upon 
the  primitive  life  of  the  old  huntsman,  the 
Cossack,  Yeroshka,  who  lives  as  the  grass 
lives,  without  care,  without  grief,  and  without 
reflection.  Once  more  we  feel  that  the  soul  of 
the  writer  is  dissatisfied,  still  searching  for  some- 
thing he  has  not  found. 

In  1854,  Tolstoy  took  part  in  the  Crimean 
War,  which  supplied  him  with  the  stuff  for 
what  are  perhaps  the  most  truthful  pictures  of 
war  that  have  ever  been  written.  But  even  here, 
we  feel  he  has  not  yet  found  his  heart's  desire. 
Something  is  wrong.  He  was  recommended  for 
the  St.  George's  Cross,  but  owing  to  his  being 
without  some  necessary  official  document  at  the 
time  of  his  recommendation,  he  failed  to  receive 
it.  This  incident  is  a  symbol  of  the  greater 
failure,  the  failure  to  achieve   the  inward  happi- 

85 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

ness  that  he  is  seeking — a  solid  ground  to  tread 
on,  a  bridge  to  the  infinite,  a  final  place  of  peace. 
In  his  private  diary  there  is  an  entry  made  at 
the  commencement  of  the  war,  while  he  was  at 
Silistria,  which  runs  as  follows  : 

"  I  have  no  modesty ;  that  is  my  great 
defect.  ...  I  am  ugly,  awkward,  uncleanly,  and 
lack  society  education.  I  am  irritable,  a  bore  to 
others,  not  modest ;  intolerant,  and  as  shamefaced 
as  a  child.  ...  I  am  almost  an  ignoramus.  What 
I  do  know  I  have  learnt  anyhow,  by  myself,  in 
snatches,  without  sequence,  without  a  plan,  and 
it  amounts  to  very  little.  I  am  incontinent, 
undecided,  inconstant,  and  stupidly  vain  and 
vehement,  like  all  characterless  people.  I  am 
not  brave.  ...  I  am  clever,  but  my  cleverness 
has  as  yet  not  been  thoroughly  tested  on  anything. 
...  I  am  honest ;  that  is  to  say,  I  love  good- 
ness. .  .  .  There  is  a  thing  I  love  more  than 
goodness,  and  that  is  fame.  I  am  so  ambitious, 
and  so  little  has  this  feeling  been  gratified,  that, 
should  I  have  to  choose  between  fame  and  goodness, 
I  fear  I  may  often  choose  the  former.  Yes,  I  am 
not  modest,  and  therefore  I  am  proud  at  heart, 
shamefaced,  and  shy  in  society." 

At  the  time  that  Tolstoy  wrote  this  he  was  a 
master,  as  Mr.  Aylmer  Maude  points  out,  of  the 
French  and  German  languages,  besides  having 
some  knowledge  of  English,  Latin,  Arabic,  and 
Turco-Tartar.      He  had   published    stories  which 

86 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

had  caused  the  editors  of  the  best  Russian 
magazines  to  offer  him  the  rate  of  pay  accorded 
to  the  best-known  writers.  Therefore  his  dis- 
content with  his  position,  both  intellectual  and 
social,  was  in  reality  quite  unfounded. 

After  the  Crimean  War,  Tolstoy  went  abroad. 
He  found  nothing  in  Western  Europe  to  satisfy 
him.  On  his  return  he  settled  down  at  Yasnaya 
Polyana,  and  married ;  and  the  great  patriarchal 
phase  of  his  life  began,  during  which  every  gift 
and  every  happiness  that  man  can  be  blessed 
with  seemed  to  have  fallen  to  his  lot.  It  was 
then  that  he  wrote  War  and  Peace,  in  which  he 
describes  the  conflict  between  one  half  of  Europe 
and  the  other.  He  takes  one  of  the  largest 
canvases  ever  attacked  by  man ;  and  he  writes 
a  prose  epic  on  a  period  full  of  tremendous 
events.  His  piercing  glance  sees  through  all 
the  fictions  of  national  prejudice  and  patriotic 
bias ;  and  he  gives  us  what  we  feel  to  be  the 
facts  as  they  were,  the  very  truth.  No  detail 
is  too  small  for  him,  no  catastrophe  too  great. 
He  traces  the  growth  of  the  spreading  tree  to 
its  minute  seed,  the  course  of  the  great  river 
to  its  tiny  source.  He  makes  a  whole  vanished 
generation  of  public  and  private  men  live  before 
our  eyes  in  such  a  way  that  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  these  people  are  not  a  part  of 
our    actual    experience;    and    that    his  creations 

8; 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

are  not  men  and  women  we  have  seen  with  our 
own  eyes,  and  whose  voices  we  have  heard  with 
our  own  ears. 

But  when  we  put  down  this  wonderful  book, 
unequalled  as  a  prose  epic,  as  a  panorama  of  a 
period  and  a  gallery  of  a  thousand  finished 
portraits,  we  are  still  left  with  the  impression 
that  the  author  has  not  yet  found  what  he  is 
seeking.  He  is  still  asking  why  ?  and  wherefore  ? 
What  does  it  all  mean  ?  why  all  these  horrors, 
why  these  sacrifices  ?  Why  all  this  conflict  and 
suffering  of  nations  ?  What  do  these  high  deeds, 
this  heroism,  mean  ?  What  is  the  significance  of 
these  State  problems,  and  the  patriotic  self- 
sacrifice  of  nations  ?  We  are  aware  that  the 
soul  of  Tolstoy  is  alone  in  an  awful  solitude,  and 
that  it  is  shivering  on  the  heights,  conscious  that 
all  round  it  is  emptiness,  darkness  and  despair. 

Again,  in  War  and  Peace  we  are  conscious 
that  Tolstoy's  proud  nature,  the  "  Lucifer "  type 
in  him,  is  searching  for  another  ideal ;  and  that 
in  the  character  of  Pierre  Bezuhov  he  is  already 
setting  up  before  us  the  ideal  of  Ivan  Durak  as 
the  model  which  we  should  seek  to  imitate.  And 
in  Pierre  Bezuhov  we  feel  that  there  is  something 
of  Tolstoy  himself.  Manners  change,  but  man, 
faced  by  the  problem  of  life,  is  the  same  through- 
out all  ages  ;  and,  whether  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously,   Tolstoy    proves    this    in    writing  Anna 

88 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

Karenina.  Here  again,  on  a  large  canvas,  we  see 
unrolled  before  us  the  contemporary  life  of  the 
upper  classes  in  Russia,  in  St.  Petersburg,  and 
in  the  country,  with  the  same  sharpness  of 
vision,  which  seizes  every  outward  detail,  and 
reveals  every  recess  of  the  heart  and  mind. 
Nearly  all  characters  in  all  fiction  seem  bookish 
beside  those  of  Tolstoy.  His  men  and  women 
are  so  real  and  so  true  that,  even  if  his  psycho- 
logical analysis  of  them  may  sometimes  err  and 
go  wrong  from  its  oversubtlety  and  its  desire  to 
explain  too  much,  the  characters  themselves  seem 
to  correct  this  automatically,  as  though  they  were 
independent  of  their  creator.  He  creates  a 
character  and  gives  it  life.  He  may  theorise  on 
a  character,  just  as  he  might  theorise  on  a  person 
in  real  life ;  and  he  may  theorise  wrong,  simply 
because  sometimes  no  theorising  is  necessary,  and 
the  very  fact  of  a  theory  being  set  down  in  words 
may  give  a  false  impression  ;  but,  as  soon  as  the 
character  speaks  and  acts,  it  speaks  and  acts  in 
the  manner  which  is  true  to  itself,  and  corrects 
the  false  impression  of  the  theory,  just  as  though 
it  were  an  independent  person  over  whom  the 
author  had  no  control. 

Nearly  every  critic,  at  least  nearly  every  English 
critic,^  in  dealing  with  Anna  Karenina^  has  found 
fault  with  the  author  for  the  character  of  Vronsky. 

^  Matthew  Arnold  is  a  notable  exception. 

89 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Anna  Karenina,  they  say,  could  never  have  fallen 
in  love  with  such  an  ordinary  commonplace  man. 
Vronsky,  one  critic  has  said  (in  a  brilliant  article), 
is  only  a  glorified  "  Steerforth."  The  answer 
to  this  is  that  if  you  go  to  St.  Petersburg  or 
to  London,  or  to  any  other  town  you  like  to 
mention,  you  will  find  that  the  men  with  whom 
the  Anna  Kareninas  of  this  world  fall  in  love  are 
precisely  the  Vronskys,  and  no  one  else,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  Vronsky  is  a  man.  He  is  not 
a  hero,  and  he  is  not  a  villain  ;  he  is  not  what 
people  call  "  interesting,"  but  a  man,  as  masculine 
as  Anna  is  feminine,  with  many  good  qualities 
and  many  limitations,  but  above  all  things  alive. 
Nearly  every  novelist,  with  the  exception  of 
Fielding,  ends,  in  spite  of  himself,  by  placing  his 
hero  either  above  or  beneath  the  standard  of  real 
life.  There  are  many  Vronskys  to-day  in  St. 
Petersburg,  and  for  the  matter  of  that,  ^nutatis 
mutandis,  in  London.  But  no  novelist  except 
Tolstoy  has  ever  had  the  power  to  put  this  simple 
thing,  an  ordinary  man,  into  a  book.  Put  one  of 
Meredith's  heroes  next  to  Vronsky,  and  Meredith's 
hero  will  appear  like  a  figure  dressed  up  for  a 
fancy-dress  ball.  Put  one  of  Bourget's  heroes 
next  to  him,  with  all  his  psychological  documents 
attached  to  him,  and,  in  spite  of  all  the  analysis 
in  the  world,  side  by  side  with  Tolstoy's  human 
being  he  will  seem  but  a  plaster-cast.     Yet,  all 

90 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

the  time,  in  Anna  Karenina  we  feel,  as  in  War 
and  Peace^  that  the  author  is  still  unsatisfied  and 
hungry,  searching  for  something  he  has  not  yet 
found ;  and  once  again,  this  time  in  still  sharper 
outline  and  more  living  colours,  he  paints  an  ideal 
of  simplicity  which  is  taking  us  towards  Ivan 
Durak  in  the  character  of  Levin.  Into  this 
character,  too,  we  feel  that  Tolstoy  has  put  a  great 
deal  of  himself;  and  that  Levin,  if  he  is  not 
Tolstoy  himself,  is  what  Tolstoy  would  like  to  be. 
But  the  loneliness  and  the  void  that  are  round 
Tolstoy's  mind  are  not  yet  filled ;  and  in  that 
loneliness  and  in  that  void  we  are  sharply  conscious 
of  the  brooding  presence  of  despair,  and  the  power 
of  darkness. 

We  feel  that  Tolstoy  is  afraid  of  the  dark ; 
that  to  him  there  is  something  wrong  in  the 
whole  of  human  life,  a  radical  mistake.  He  is 
conscious  that,  with  all  his  genius,  he  has  only 
been  able  to  record  the  fact  that  all  that  he  has 
found  in  life  is  not  what  he  is  looking  for,  but 
something  irrelevant  and  unessential ;  and,  at  the 
same  time,  that  he  has  not  been  able  to  determine 
the  thing  in  life  which  is  not  a  mistake,  nor  where 
the  true  aim,  the  essential  thing,  is  to  be  found, 
nor  in  what  it  consists.  It  is  at  this  moment  that 
the  crisis  occurred  in  Tolstoy's  life  which  divides 
it  outwardly  into  two  sections,  although  it  con- 
stitutes no  break  in  his   inward  evolution.     The 

91 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

fear  of  the  dark,  of  the  abyss  yawning  in  front  of 
him,  was  so  strong  that  he  felt  he  must  rid 
himself  of  it  at  all  costs. 

"  I  felt  terror  "  (he  writes)  "  of  what  was  await- 
ing me,  though  I  knew  that  this  terror  was  more 
terrible  than  my  position  itself;  I  could  not  wait 
patiently  for  the  end  ;  my  horror  of  the  darkness 
was  too  great,  and  I  felt  I  must  rid  myself  of  it 
as  soon  as  possible  by  noose  or  bullet." 

This  terror  was  not  a  physical  fear  of  death,  but 
an  abstract  fear,  arising  from  the  consciousness 
that  the  cold  mists  of  decay  were  rising  round 
him.  By  the  realisation  of  the  nothingness  of 
everything,  of  what  Leopardi  calls  '*  I'infinita 
vanita  del  tutto,"  he  was  brought  to  the  verge  of 
suicide.  And  then  came  the  change  which  he 
describes  thus  in  his  Confessmt :  "  I  grew  to 
hate  myself ;  and  now  all  has  become  clear  to  me." 
This  was  the  preliminary  step  of  the  development 
which  led  him  to  believe  that  he  had  at  last  found 
the  final  and  everlasting  truth.  "  A  man  has  only 
got  not  to  desire  lands  or  money,  in  order  to  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  God."  Property,  he  came  to 
believe,  was  the  source  of  all  evil.  "  It  is  not  a 
law  of  nature,  the  will  of  God,  or  a  historical 
necessity ;  rather  a  superstition,  neither  strong 
nor  terrible,  but  weak  and  contemptible."  To 
free  oneself  from  this  superstition  he  thought  was 

92 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

as  easy  as  to  stamp  on  a  spider.  He  desired 
literally  to  carry  out  the  teaching  of  the  Gospels, 
to  give  up  all  he  had  and  to  become  a  beggar. 

This  ideal  he  was  not  able  to  carry  out  in 
practice.  His  family,  his  wife,  opposed  him  :  and 
he  was  not  strong  enough  to  face  the  uncom- 
promising and  terrible  sayings  which  speak  of  a 
man's  foes  being  those  of  his  own  household,  of 
father  being  divided  against  son,  and  household 
against  household,  of  the  dead  being  left  to  bury 
theirMead.  He  put  before  him  the  ideal  of  the 
Christian  saints,  and  of  the  early  Russian  martyrs 
who  literally  acted  upon  the  saying  of  Christ : 
"  Whoso  leaveth  not  house  and  lands  and  children 
for  My  sake,  is  not  worthy  of  Me."  Tolstoy,  in- 
stead of  crushing  the  spider  of  property,  shut  his 
eyes  to  it.  He  refused  to  handle  money,  or  to 
have  anything  to  do  with  it  ;  but  this  does  not 
alter  the  fact  that  it  was  handled  for  him,  so  that 
he  retained  its  advantages,  and  this  without  any 
of  the  harassment  which  arises  from  the  handling 
of  property.  His  affairs  were,  and  still  are, 
managed  for  him  ;  and  he  continued  to  live  as  he 
had  done  before.  No  sane  person  would  think  of 
blaming  Tolstoy  for  this.  He  was  not  by  nature 
a  St.  Francis  ;  he  was  not  by  nature  a  Russian 
martyr,  but  the  reverse.  What  one  does  resent 
is  not  that  his  practice  is  inconsistent  with  his 
teaching,  but  that  his  teaching  is  inconsistent  with 

93 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

the  ideal  which  it  professes  to  embody.  He 
takes  the  Christian  teaching,  and  tells  the  world 
that  it  is  the  only  hope  of  salvation,  the  only 
key  to  the  riddle  of  life.  At  the  same  time  he 
neglects  the  first  truth  on  which  that  teaching  is 
based,  namely,  that  man  must  be  born  again  ;  he 
must  humble  himself  and  become  as  a  little  child. 
It  is  just  this  final  and  absolute  surrender  that 
Tolstoy  has  been  unable  to  make.  Instead  of 
loving  God  through  himself,  and  loving  himself 
for  the  God  in  him,  he  hates  himself,  and  refuses 
to  recognise  the  gifts  that  God  has  given  him. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  he  talks  of  all  his  great 
work,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  stories  written 
for  children,  as  being  worthless.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  he  ceased  writing  novels,  and  at- 
tempted to  plough  the  fields.  And  the  cause  of 
all  this  is  simply  spiritual  pride,  because  he  was 
unwilling  "  to  do  his  duty  in  that  state  of  life  to 
which  it  had  pleased  God  to  call  him."  Provi- 
dence had  made  him  a  novelist  and  a  writer,  and 
not  a  tiller  of  the  fields.  Providence  had  made 
him  not  only  a  novelist,  but  perhaps  the  greatest 
novelist  that  has  ever  lived  ;  yet  he  deliberately 
turns  upon  this  gift,  and  spurns  it,  and  spits  upon 
it,  and  says  that  it  is  worth  nothing. 

The  question  is,  has  a  human  being  the  right 
to  do  this,  especially  if,  for  any  reasons  whatever, 
he  is   not  able  to  make    the   full   and   complete 

94 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

renunciation,  and  to  cut  himself  off  from  the  world 
altogether  ?  The  answer  is  that  if  this  be  the 
foundation  of  Tolstoy's  teaching,  people  have  a 
right  to  complain  of  there  being  something  wrong 
in  it.  If  he  had  left  the  world  and  become  a 
pilgrim,  like  one  of  the  early  Russian  saints,  not 
a  word  could  have  been  said ;  or  if  he  had 
remained  in  the  world,  preaching  the  ideals  of 
Christianity  and  carrying  them  out  as  far  as  he 
could,  not  a  word  could  have  been  said.  But, 
while  he  has  not  followed  the  first  course,  he  has 
preached  that  the  second  course  is  wrong.  He  has 
striven  after  the  ideal  of  Ivan  Durak,  but  has  been 
unable  to  find  it,  simply  because  he  has  been 
unable  to  humble  himself;  he  has  re-written  the 
Gospels  to  suit  his  own  temperament.  The  cry 
of  his  youth,  "  I  have  no  modesty,"  remains  true 
of  him  after  his  conversion.  It  is  rather  that  he 
has  no  humility ;  and,  instead  of  acknowledging 
that  every  man  is  appointed  to  a  definite  task, 
and  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  superfluous 
man  or  a  superfluous  task,  he  has  preached  that 
all  tasks  are  superfluous  except  what  he  himself 
considers  to  be  necessary ;  instead  of  preaching 
the  love  of  the  divine  "  image  of  the  King,"  with 
which  man  is  stamped  like  a  coin,  he  has  told  us 
to  love  the  maker  of  the  coin  by  hatred  of  His 
handiwork,  quite  regardless  of  the  image  with 
which  it  is  stamped. 

95 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

This  all  arises  from  the  dual  personality  in  the 
man,  the  conflict  between  the  titanic  "  Lucifer " 
and  the  other  element  in  him,  for  ever  searching 
for  the  ideal  of  Ivan  Durak.  The  Titan  is  con- 
sumed with  desire  to  become  Ivan  Durak ;  he 
preaches  to  the  whole  world  that  they  should  do 
so,  but  he  cannot  do  it  himself.  Other  proud  and 
titanic  natures  have  done  it ;  but  Tolstoy  cannot 
do  what  Dante  did.  Dante  was  proud  and  a  Titan, 
but  Dante  divested  himself  of  his  pride,  and  see- 
ing the  truth,  said  :  "  In  la  sua  volontade  e  nostra 
pace."  Nor  can  Tolstoy  attain  to  Goethe's  great 
cry  of  recognition  of  the  "  himmlische  Machte," 
"  Wer  nie  sein  Brod  mit  Thranen  ass."  He 
remains  isolated  in  his  high  and  terrible  solitude : 

"In  the  cold  starlight  where  thou  canst  not  cUmb." 

Tourgeniev  said  of  Tolstoy,  "  He  never  loved 
any  one  but  himself."  Merejkowski,  in  his 
Tolstoy  as  Man  and  Artist^  a  creative  work 
of  criticism,  is  nearer  the  truth  when  he  says, 
"  He  has  never  loved  any  man,  not  even 
himself  \  "  But  Merejkowski  considers  that  the 
full  circle  of  Tolstoy's  spiritual  life  is  not  closed. 
He  does  not  believe  he  has  found  the  truth 
which  he  has  sought  for  all  his  life,  nor  that  he 
is,  as  yet,  at  rest. 

"  I  cannot  refuse  to  believe  him  "  (he  writes) 
"  when  he  speaks  of  himself  as  a  pitiable  fledgling 

96 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

fallen  from  the  nest.  Yes,  however  terrible,  it  is 
true.  This  Titan,  with  all  his  vigour,  is  lying  on 
his  back  and  wailing  in  the  high  grass,  as  you 
and  I  and  all  the  rest  of  us.  No,  he  has  found 
nothing ;  no  faith,  no  God.  And  his  whole  justi- 
fication is  solely  in  his  hopeless  prayer,  this  pierc- 
ing and  plaintive  cry  of  boundless  solitude  and 
dread.  .  .  .  Will  he  at  last  understand  that 
there  is  no  higher  or  lower  in  the  matter ;  that 
the  two  seemingly  contradictory  and  equally  true 
paths,  leading  to  one  and  the  same  goal,  are  not 
two  paths,  but  one  path  which  merely  seems  to  be 
two  ;  and  that  it  is  not  by  going  against  what  is 
earthly  or  fleeing  from  it,  but  only  through  what 
is  earthly,  that  we  can  reach  the  Divine ;  that  it 
is  not  by  divesting  ourselves  of  the  flesh,  but 
through  the  flesh,  that  we  can  reach  that  which 
is  beyond  the  flesh  ?  Shall  we  fear  the  flesh  ?  we, 
the  children  of  Him  who  said,  '  My  blood  is  drink 
indeed,  and  My  flesh  is  meat  indeed  ' ;  we,  whose 
God  is  that  God  whose  Word  was  made  flesh  ?  "  ^ 

Yet,  whatever  the  mistakes  of  Tolstoy's  teach- 
ing may  be,  they  do  not  detract  from  the  moral 
authority  of  the  man.  All  his  life  he  has  searched 
for  the  truth,  and  all  his  life  he  has  said  exactly 
what  he  thought ;  and  though  he  has  fearlessly  at- 
tacked all  constituted  authorities,  nobody  has  dared 
to  touch  him.      He  is  too  great.      This  is  the  first 

^  Tolstoy  as  Man   and  Artist^    pp.    93,    95.      This   passage  is 
translated  from  the  Russian  edition. 

G  97 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

time  independent  thought  has  prevailed  in  Russia  ; 
and  this  victory  is  the  greatest  service  he  has 
rendered  to  Russia  as  a  man. 

Neither  Tolstoy  nor  Dostoievsky  could  endure 
Tourgeniev  ;  their  dislike  of  him  is  interesting,  and 
helps  us  to  understand  the  nature  of  their  work  and 
of  their  artistic  ideals,  and  the  nature  of  the  distance 
that  separates  the  work  of  Tourgeniev  from  that 
of  Tolstoy.  "  I  despise  the  man,"  Tolstoy  wrote  of 
Tourgeniev  to  Fet.  Dostoievsky,  in  his  novel  The 
Possessed}  draws  a  scathing  portrait  of  Tourgeniev, 
in  which  every  defect  of  the  man  is  noted  but  grossly 
exaggerated.      This  portrait  is  not  uninstructive. 

"  I  read  his  works  in  my  childhood,"  Dostoi- 
evsky writes,  "  I  even  revelled  in  them.  They 
were  the  delight  of  my  boyhood  and  my  youth. 
Then  I  gradually  grew  to  feel  colder  towards  his 
writing."  He  goes  on  to  say  that  Tourgeniev  is 
one  of  those  authors  who  powerfully  affect  one 
generation,  and  are  then  put  on  the  shelf,  like  the 
scene  of  a  theatre.  The  reason  of  this  dislike,  of 
the  inability  to  admire  Tourgeniev's  work,  which 
was  shared  by  Tolstoy  and  Dostoievsky,  is  per- 
haps that  both  these  men,  each  in  his  own  way, 
reached  the  absolute  truth  of  the  life  which  was 
round    them.       Tolstoy    painted    the    outer    and 

*  It  should  be  said  that  this  portrait  is  so  unfair,  and  'yet  con- 
tains elements  of  truth  so  acutely  observed,  that  for  some  people 
it  spoils  the  whole  book. 

98 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

the  inner  life  of  those  with  whom  he  came  in 
contact,  in  a  manner  such  as  has  never  been  seen 
before  or  since;  and  Dostoievsky  painted  the 
inner  life  (however  fantastic  he  made  the  outer 
machinery  of  his  work)  with  an  insight  that  has 
never  been  attained  before  or  since.  Now  Tour- 
geniev  painted  people  of  the  same  epoch,  the  same 
generation  ;  he  dealt  with  the  same  material;  he 
dealt  with  it  as  an  artist  and  as  a  poet,  as  a  great 
artist,  and  as  a  great  poet.  But  his  vision  was  weak 
and  narrow  compared  with  that  of  Tolstoy,  and 
his  understanding  was  cold  and  shallow  compared 
with  that  of  Dostoievsky.  His  characters,  beside 
those  of  Tolstoy,  seem  caricatures,  and  beside 
those  of  Dostoievsky  they  are  conventional. 

In  Europe  no  foreign  writer  has  ever  received 
more  abundant  praise  from  the  most  eclectic 
judges  than  has  Tourgeniev.  Flaubert  said  of 
him :  "  Quel  gigantesque  bonhomme  que  ce 
Scythe  !  "  George  Sand  said  :  "  Maitre,  il  nous 
faut  tous  aller  a  votre  ecole."  Taine  speaks  of 
Tourgeniev's  work  as  being  the  finest  artistic  pro- 
duction since  Sophocles.  Twenty-five  years  have 
now  passed  since  Tourgeniev's  death ;  and,  as 
M.  Haumant  points  out  in  his  book,  the  period  of 
reaction  and  of  doubt,  with  regard  to  his  work,  has 
now  set  in  even  in  Europe.  People  are  beginning 
to  ask  themselves  whether  Tourgeniev's  pictures 
are  true,  whether  the  Russians  that  he  describes 

99 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

ever  existed,  and  whether  the  praise  which  was 
bestow^ed  upon  him  by  his  astonished  contempor- 
aries all  over  Europe  was  not  a  gross  exaggeration. 

One  reason  of  the  abundant  and  perhaps 
excessive  praise  which  was  showered  on  Tour- 
geniev  by  European  critics  is  that  it  was  chiefly 
through  Tourgeniev's  work  that  Europe  discovered 
Russian  literature,  and  became  aware  that  novels 
were  being  written  in  which  dramatic  issues,  as 
poignant  and  terrible  as  those  of  Greek  tragedy, 
arose  simply  out  of  the  clash  of  certain  characters 
in  everyday  life.  The  simplicity  of  Russian 
literature,  the  naturalness  of  the  characters  in 
Russian  fiction,  came  like  a  revelation  to  Europe ; 
and,  as  this  revelation  came  about  partly  through 
the  work  of  Tourgeniev,  it  is  not  difficult  to  under- 
stand that  he  received  the  praise  not  only  due  to 
him  as  an  artist,  but  the  praise  for  all  the  qualities 
which  are  inseparable  from  the  work  of  any  Russian. 

Heine  says  somewhere  that  the  man  who  first 
came  to  Germany  was  astonished  at  the  abund- 
ance of  ideas  there.  "  This  man,"  he  says,  "  was 
like  the  traveller  who  found  a  nugget  of  gold 
directly  he  arrived  in  El  Dorado  ;  but  his  enthu- 
siasm died  down  when  he  discovered  that  in 
El  Dorado  there  was  nothing  but  nuggets  of  gold." 
As  it  was  with  ideas  in  Germany,  according  to 
Heine,  so  was  it  with  the  naturalness  of  Tourgeniev. 
Compared  with  the  work  of  Tolstoy  and  that  of  all 

100 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

other  Russian  writers,  Tourgeniev's  naturalness  is 
less  astonishing,  because  he  possesses  the  same 
qualities  that  they  possess,  only  in  a  less  degree. 

When  all  is  said,  Tourgeniev  was  a  great 
poet.  What  time  has  not  taken  away  from  him, 
and  what  time  can  never  take  away,  is  the 
beauty  of  his  language  and  the  poetry  in  his 
work.  Every  Russian  schoolboy  has  read  the 
works  of  Tourgeniev  before  he  has  left  school ; 
and  every  Russian  schoolboy  will  probably  con- 
tinue to  do  so,  because  Tourgeniev's  prose  remains 
a  classic  model  of  simple,  beautiful,  and  har- 
monious language,  and  as  such  it  can  hardly  be 
excelled.  Tourgeniev  never  wrote  anything  better 
than  the  book  which  brought  him  fame,  the 
Sportsman's  Sketches.  In  this  book  nearly  the 
whole  of  his  talent  finds  expression.  One  does 
not  know  which  to  admire  more — the  delicacy 
of  the  art  in  choosing  and  recording  his  im- 
pressions, or  the  limpid  and  musical  utterance 
with  which  they  are  recorded.  To  the  reader 
who  only  knows  his  work  through  a  transla- 
tion, three-quarters  of  the  beauty  are  lost; 
yet  so  great  is  the  truth,  and  so  moving  is  the 
poetry  of  these  sketches,  that  even  in  translation 
they  will  strike  a  reader  as  unrivalled. 

There  is,  perhaps,  nothing  so  difficult  in  the 
world  to  translate  as  stories  dealing  with  Russian 
peasants.     The  simplicity  and  directness  of  their 

lOI 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

speech  are  the  despair  of  the  translator ;  and  to 
translate  them  properly  would  require  literary- 
talent  at  once  as  great  and  as  delicate  as  the 
author's.  Mrs.  Garnett's  version  of  Tourgeniev's 
work  is  admirable ;  yet  in  reading  the  translation 
of  the  Sportsman' s  Sketches,  and  comparing  it 
with  the  original,  one  feels  that  the  task  is  an 
almost  impossible  one.  Some  writers,  Rudyard 
Kipling  for  instance,  succeed  in  conveying  to  us 
the  impression  which  is  made  by  the  conversation 
of  men  in  exotic  countries.  When  Rudyard 
Kipling  gives  us  the  speech  of  an  Indian,  he 
translates  it  into  simple  and  biblical  English. 
There  is  no  doubt  this  is  the  right  way  to 
deal  with  the  matter ;  it  is  the  method  which 
was  adopted  with  perfect  success  by  the  great 
writers  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  method 
of  Fielding  and  Smollett  in  dealing  with  the 
conversation  of  simple  men.  One  cannot  help 
thinking  that  it  is  a  mistake,  in  translating 
the  speech  of  people  like  Russian  peasants,  or 
Indians,  or  Greeks,  however  familiar  the  speech 
may  be,  to  try  to  render  it  by  the  equivalent 
colloquial  or  slang  English.  For  instance,  Mrs. 
Garnett,  in  translating  one  of  Tourgeniev's 
masterpieces.  The  Singers,  turns  the  Russian 
words  "  nie  vryosh "  (Art  thou  not  lying  ?)  by 
"  Isn't  it  your  humbug? "  In  the  same  story  she 
translates   the    Russian   word  "  molchat "  by  the 

102 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

slang  expression  "  shut  up."  Now  "  shut  up " 
might,  in  certain  circumstances,  be  the  colloquial 
equivalent  of  "  molchat " ;  but  the  expression 
conveyed  is  utterly  false,  and  it  would  be  better 
to  translate  it  simply  "  be  silent  "  ;  because  to 
translate  the  talk  of  the  Russian  peasant  into 
English  colloquialisms  conveys  precisely  the  same 
impression,  to  any  one  familiar  with  the  original, 
which  he  would  receive  were  he  to  come  across 
the  talk  of  a  Scotch  gillie  translated  into  English 
cockney  slang. 

This  may  seem  a  small  point,  but  in  reality 
it  is  the  chief  problem  of  all  translation,  and 
especially  of  that  translation  which  deals  with 
the  talk  and  the  ways  of  simple  men.  It  is  there- 
fore of  cardinal  importance,  when  the  material  in 
question  happens  to  be  the  talk  of  Russian 
peasants ;  and  I  have  seen  no  translation  in 
which  this  mistake  is  not  made.  How  great  the 
beauty  of  the  original  must  be  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  even  in  a  translation  of  this  kind  one 
can  still  discern  it,  and  that  one  receives  at  least 
a  shadow  of  the  impression  which  the  author  in- 
tended to  convey.  If  the  Sportsman' s  Sketches 
be  the  masterpiece  of  Tourgeniev,  he  rose  to  the 
same  heights  once  more  at  the  close  of  his 
career,  when  he  wrote  the  incomparable  Poems 
in  Prose.  Here  once  more  he  touched  the 
particular  vibrating  string  which  was  his  special 

103 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

secret,  and  which  thrills  and  echoes  in  the  heart 
with  so  lingering  a  sweetness. 

So  much  for  Tourgeniev  as  a  poet.  But  Tour- 
geniev  was  a  novelist,  he  was  famous  as  a 
novelist,  and  must  be  considered  as  such.  His 
three  principal  novels,  A  House  of  Gentlefolk^ 
Fathers  and  Sons,  and  Virgin  Soil,  laid  the 
foundation  of  his  European  fame.  Their  merits 
consist  in  the  ideal  character  of  the  women 
described,  the  absence  of  tricks  of  mechanism  and 
melodrama,  the  naturalness  of  the  sequence  of 
the  events,  the  harmony  and  proportion  of  the 
whole,  and  the  vividness  of  the  characters.  No 
one  can  deny  that  the  characters  of  Tourgeniev 
live ;  they  are  intensely  vivid.  Whether  they  are 
true  to  life  is  another  question.  The  difference 
between  the  work  of  Tolstoy  and  Tourgeniev  is 
this  :  that  Tourgeniev's  characters  are  as  living  as 
any  characters  ever  are  in  books,  but  they  belong, 
comparatively  speaking,  to  bookland,  and  are  thus 
conventional ;  whereas  Tolstoy's  characters  belong 
to  life.  The  fault  which  Russian  critics  find  with 
Tourgeniev's  characters  is  that  they  are  exagger- 
ated, that  there  is  an  element  of  caricature  in  them  ; 
and  that  they  are  permeated  by  the  faults  of  the 
author's  own  character,  namely,  his  weakness,  and, 
above  all,  his  self-consciousness.  M.  Haumant points 
out  that  the  want  of  backbone  in  all  Tourgeniev's 
characters  does  not  prove  that  types  of  this  kind 

104 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

must  necessarily  be  untrue  or  misleading  pictures 
of  the  Russian  character,  since  Tourgeniev  was  not 
only  a  Russian,  but  an  exceptionally  gifted  and 
remarkable  Russian.  Tourgeniev  himself  divides 
all  humanity  into  two  types,  the  Don  Quixotes 
and  the  Hamlets.  With  but  one  notable  ex- 
ception, he  almost  exclusively  portrayed  the 
Hamlets.  Feeble,  nerveless  people,  full  of  ideas, 
enthusiastic  in  speech,  capable  by  their  words  of 
exciting  enthusiasm  and  even  of  creating  belief  in 
themselves,  but  incapable  of  action  and  devoid 
of  will ;  they  lack  both  the  sublime  simplicity  and 
the  weakness  of  Ivan  Durak,  which  is  not  weak- 
ness but  strength,  because  it  proceeds  from  a 
profound  goodness. 

To  this  there  is  one  exception.  In  Fathers  and 
Sons,  Tourgeniev  drew  a  portrait  of  the  "  Lucifer  " 
type,  of  an  unbending  and  inflexible  will,  namely, 
Bazarov.  There  is  no  character  in  the  whole  of 
his  work  which  is  more  alive;  and  nothing  that 
he  wrote  ever  aroused  so  much  controversy  and 
censure  as  this  figure,  Tourgeniev  invented  the 
type  of  the  intellectual  Nihilist  in  fiction.  If  he 
was  not  the  first  to  invent  the  word,  he  was  the 
first  to  apply  it  and  to  give  it  currency.  The  type 
remains,  and  will  remain,  of  the  man  who  believes 
in  nothing,  bows  to  nothing,  bends  to  nothing,  and 
who  retains  his  invincible  pride  until  death  strikes 
him  down.  Here  again,  compared  with  the 
105 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Nihilists  whom  Dostoievsky  has  drawn  in  his 
Possessed^  we  feel  that,  so  far  as  the  inner  truth 
of  this  type  is  concerned,  Tourgeniev's  Bazarov  is 
a  book-character,  extraordinarily  vivid  and  living 
though  he  be ;  and  that  Dostoievsky's  Nihilists, 
however  outwardly  fantastic  they  may  seem,  are 
inwardly  not  only  truer,  but  the  very  quintessence 
of  truth.  Tourgeniev  never  actually  saw  the  real 
thing  as  Tolstoy  might  have  seen  it  and  described 
it ;  nor  could  he  divine  by  intuition  the  real 
thing  as  Dostoievsky  divined  it,  whether  he  saw 
it  or  not.  But  Tourgeniev  evolved  a  type  out  of 
his  artistic  imagination,  and  made  a  living  figure 
which,  to  us  at  any  rate,  is  extraordinarily  strik- 
ing. This  character  has  proved,  however,  highly 
irritating  to  those  who  knew  the  prototype  from 
which  it  was  admittedly  drawn,  and  considered 
him  not  only  a  far  more  interesting  character  than 
Tourgeniev's  conception,  but  quite  different  from 
it.  But  whatever  fault  may  be  found  with 
Bazarov,  none  can  be  found  with  the  description 
of  his  death.  Here  Tourgeniev  reaches  his  high- 
water  mark  as  a  novelist,  and  strikes  a  note  of 
manly  pathos  which,  by  its  reserve,  suggests  an 
infinity  of  things  all  the  more  striking  for  being 
left  unsaid.  The  death  of  Bazarov  is  one  of  the 
great  pages  of  the  world's  fiction. 

In    Virgin  Soil,  Tourgeniev    attempts  to  give 
a    sketch    of    underground    life    in    Russia — the 

io6 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

revolutionary  movement,  helpless  in  face  of  the 
ignorance  of  the  masses  and  the  unpreparedness  of 
the  nation  at  large  for  any  such  movement.  Here, 
in  the  opinion  of  all  Russian  judges,  and  of  most 
latter-day  critics  who  have  knowledge  of  the  subject, 
he  failed.  In  describing  the  official  class,  although 
he  does  this  with  great  skill  and  cleverness, he  makes 
a  gallery  of  caricatures ;  and  the  revolutionaries 
whom  he  sets  before  us  as  types,  however  good 
they  may  be  as  fiction,  are  not  the  real  thing.^ 
Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  Tourgeniev's  limitations, 
these  three  books,  A  House  of  Gentlefolk^  Fathers 
and  Sons,  and  Virgin  Soil,  must  always  have  a 
permanent  value  as  reflecting  the  atmosphere  of 
the  generation  which  he  paints,  even  though  his 
pictures  be  marred  by  caricatures,  and  feeble 
when  compared  with  those  of  his  rivals. 

Of  his  other  novels,  the  most  important  are 
On  the  Eve,  Smoke,  Spring  Waters,  and  Rudin 
(the  most  striking  portrait  in  his  gallery  of 
Hamlets).  In  Spring  Waters,  Tourgeniev's  poetry 
is  allowed  free  play;  the  result  is  therefore  an 
entrancing  masterpiece.  With  regard  to  On  the 
Eve,  Tolstoy  writes  thus  :  - 

"  These  are  excellent  negative  characters,  the 
artist  and    the  father.      The   rest   are  not  types ; 

^  With  the  exception  of  Marianna,  one  of  his  most  beautiful  and 
noble  characters. 
2  Life,  p.  189. 

107 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

even  their  conception,  their  position,  is  not  typical, 
or  they  are  quite  insignificant.  That,  however,  is 
always  Tourgeniev's  mistake.  The  girl  is  hope- 
lessly bad.  '  Ah,  how  I  love  thee  !  .  .  .  Her 
eyelashes  were  long.'  In  general  it  always  sur- 
prises me  that  Tourgeniev,  with  his  mental  powers 
and  poetic  sensibility,  should,  even  in  his  methods, 
not  be  able  to  refrain  from  banality.  There  is 
no  humanity  or  sympathy  for  the  characters,  but 
the  author  exhibits  monsters  whom  he  scolds  and 
does  not  pity." 

Again,  in  writing  of  Smoke,  Tolstoy  says  :  ^ 

"  About  Smoke,  I  think  that  the  strength  of 
poetry  Jies  in  love ;  and  the  direction  of  that 
strength  depends  on  character.  Without  strength 
of  love  there  is  no  poetry;  but  strength  falsely 
directed — the  result  of  the  poet's  having  an  un- 
pleasant, weak  character — creates  dislike.  In 
Smoke  there  is  hardly  any  love  of  anything,  and 
very  little  pity ;  there  is  only  love  of  light  and 
playful  adultery ;  and  therefore  the  poetry  of  that 
novel  is  repulsive." 

These  criticisms,  especially  the  latter,  may  be 
said  to  sum  up  the  case  of  the  "  Advocatus 
Diaboli "  with  regard  to  Tourgeniev.  I  have 
quoted  them  because  they  represent  what  many 
educated  Russians  feel  at  the  present  day  about  a 
great  part  of  Tourgeniev's  work,  however  keenly 

'^  Life,  p.  312. 
108 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

they  appreciate  his  poetical  sensibih'ty  and  his 
gift  of  style.  The  view  deserves  to  be  pointed 
out,  because  all  that  can  be  said  in  praise  of 
Tourgeniev  has  not  only  been  expressed  with 
admirable  nicety  and  discrimination  by  widely 
different  critics  of  various  nationalities,  but  their 
praise  is  constantly  being  quoted ;  whereas  the 
other  side  of  the  question  is  seldom  mentioned. 
Yet  in  the  case  of  On  the  Eve,  Tolstoy's  criticism 
is  manifestly  unfair.  Tolstoy  was  unable  by  his 
nature  to  do  full  justice  to  Tourgeniev.  Perhaps 
the  most  impartial  and  acute  criticism  of 
Tourgeniev's  work  that  exists  is  to  be  found 
in  M.  de  Vogue's  Roman  Russe,  M.  de  Voglie 
is  not  indeed  blind  to  Tourgeniev's  defects ;  he 
recognises  the  superiority  both  of  Tolstoy  and 
Dostoievsky,  but  he  nevertheless  gives  Tourgeniev 
his  full  meed  of  appreciation. 

The  lapse  of  years  has  only  emphasised  the 
elements  of  banality  and  conventionality  which 
are  to  be  found  in  Tourgeniev's  work.  He  is 
a  masterly  landscape  painter ;  but  even  here  he 
is  not  without  convention.  His  landscapes  are 
always  orthodox  Russian  landscapes,  and  are 
seldom  varied.  He  seems  never  to  get  face  to 
face  with  nature,  after  the  manner  of  Wordsworth ; 
he  never  gives  us  any  elemental  pictures  of  nature, 
such  as  Gorky  succeeds  in  doing  in  a  phrase ;  but 
he  rings  the  changes  on  delicate  arrangements  of 
109 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

wood,  cloud,  mist  and  water,  vague  backgrounds 
and  diaphanous  figures,  after  the  manner  ofCorot. 
This  does  not  detract  from  the  beauty  of  his 
pictures,  and  our  admiration  for  them  is  not 
lessened ;  but  all  temptation  to  exaggerate  its 
merits  vanishes  when  we  turn  from  his  work  to 
that  of  stronger  masters. 

To  sum  up,  it  may  be  said  that  the  picture  of 
Russia  obtained  from  the  whole  of  Tourgeniev's 
work  has  been  incomplete,  but  it  is  not  inaccurate  ; 
and  such  as  it  is,  with  all  its  faults,  it  is  invaluable. 
In  1847,  Bielinski,  in  writing  to  Tourgeniev,  said : 
"  It  seems  to  me  that  you  have  little  or  no  creative 
genius.  Your  vocation  is  to  depict  reality."  This 
criticism  remained  true  to  the  end  of  Tourgeniev's 
career,  but  it  omits  his  greatest  gift,  his  poetry, 
the  magical  echoes,  the  "  unheard  melodies,"  which 
he  sets  vibrating  in  our  hearts  by  the  music  of 
his  utterance.  The  last  of  Tourgeniev's  poems  in 
prose  is  called  "  The  Russian  Language."  It  runs 
as  follows : 

"  In  days  of  doubt,  in  the  days  of  burdensome 
musing  over  the  fate  of  my  country,  thou  alone 
art  my  support  and  my  mainstay,  oh  great,  mighty, 
truthful,  and  unfettered  Russian  language  !  Were 
it  not  for  thee,  how  should  I  not  fall  into  despair 
at  the  sight  of  all  that  is  being  done  at  home? 
But  how  can  I  believe  that  such  a  tongue  was 
given  to  any  but  a  great  people  ? " 
no 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

No  greater  praise  can  be  given  to  Tourgeniev 
than  to  say  that  he  was  worthy  of  his  medium, 
and  that  no  Russian  prose  writer  ever  handled 
the  great  instrument  of  his  inheritance  with  a 
more  delicate  touch  or  a  surer  execution. 

When  Tourgeniev  was  dying,  he  wrote  to 
Tolstoy  and  implored  him  to  return  to  literature. 
"  That  gift,"  he  wrote,  *'  came  whence  all  comes  to 
us.  Return  to  your  literary  work,  great  writer 
of  our  Russian  land  !  " 

All  through  Tourgeniev's  life,  in  spite  of  his 
frequent  quarrels  with  Tolstoy,  he  never  ceased  to 
admire  the  works  of  his  rival.  Tourgeniev  had 
the  gift  of  admiration.  Tolstoy  is  absolutely 
devoid  of  it.  The  "  Lucifer  "  spirit  in  him  refuses 
to  bow  down  before  Shakespeare  or  Beethoven, 
simply  because  it  is  incapable  of  bending  at  all. 
To  justify  this  want,  this  incapacity  to  admire  the 
great  masterpieces  of  the  world,  Tolstoy  wrote  a 
book  called  What  is  Aj-t  ?  in  which  he  condemned 
theories  he  had  himself  enunciated  years  before. 
In  this,  and  in  a  book  on  Shakespeare,  he  treats 
all  art,  the  very  greatest,  as  if  it  were  in  the  same 
category  with  that  of  aesthetes  who  confine  them- 
selves to  prattling  of  "  Art  for  Art's  sake." 
Beethoven  he  brushes  aside  because,  he  says,  such 
music  can  only  appeal  to  specialists.  "  What 
proportion  of  the  world's  population,"  he  asks, 
"  have  ever  heard  the  Ninth  Symphony  or  seen 

III 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

*  King  Lear '  ?  And  how  many  of  them  enjoyed 
the  one  or  the  other?"  If  these  things  be  the 
highest  art,  and  yet  the  bulk  of  men  live  without 
them,  and  do  not  need  them,  then  the  highest  art 
lacks  all  claim  to  such  respect  as  Tolstoy  is  ready 
to  accord  to  art.  In  commenting  on  this,  Mr. 
Aylmer  Maude  writes  :  "  The  case  of  the  specialists, 
when  Tolstoy  calls  in  question  the  merits  of 
'  King  Lear '  or  of  the  Ninth  Symphony,  is  an 
easy  one." 

But  the  fallacy  does  not  lie  here.  The  fallacy 
lies  in  thinking  the  matter  is  a  case  for  specialists 
at  all.  It  is  not  a  case  for  specialists.  Beethoven's 
later  quartettes  may  be  a  case  for  the  specialist, 
just  as  the  obscurer  passages  in  Shakespeare  may 
be  a  case  for  the  specialist.  This  does  not  alter 
the  fact  that  the  whole  of  the  German  nation, 
and  multitudes  of  people  outside  Germany,  meet 
together  to  hear  Beethoven's  symphonies  played, 
and  enjoy  them.  It  does  not  alter  the  fact  that 
Shakespeare's  plays  are  translated  into  every 
language  and  enjoyed,  and,  when  they  are  per- 
formed, are  enjoyed  by  the  simplest  and  the  most 
uneducated  people.  The  highest  receipts  are 
obtained  at  the  Theatre  Fran^ais  on  holidays 
and  feast  days,  when  the  plays  of  Moliere 
are  given.  Tolstoy  leaves  out  the  fact  that  very 
great  art,  such  as  that  of  Homer,  Shakespeare, 
Dante,  Milton,  Beethoven,  Mozart,  appeals  at  the 

112 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

same  time,  and  possibly  for  different  reasons,  to 
the  highly  trained  specialist  and  to  the  most 
uncultivated  ignoramus.  This,  Dr.  Johnson  points 
out,  is  the  great  merit  of  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's 
Progress :  the  most  cultivated  man  cannot  find 
anything  to  praise  more  highly,  and  a  child  knows 
nothing  more  amusing.  This  is  also  true  of 
Paradise  Lost,  an  appreciation  of  which  is  held  in 
England  to  be  the  highest  criterion  of  scholarship. 
And  Paradise  Lost,  translated  into  simple  prose, 
is  sold  in  cheap  editions,  with  coloured  pictures, 
all  over  Russia,^  and  greedily  read  by  the 
peasants,  who  have  no  idea  that  it  is  a  poem,  but 
enjoy  it  as  a  tale  of  fantastic  adventure  and 
miraculous  events.  It  appeals  at  the  same  time 
to  their  religious  feeling  and  to  their  love  of  fairy 
tales,  and  impresses  them  by  a  certain  elevation 
in  the  language  (just  as  the  chants  in  church 
impress  them)  which  they  unconsciously  feel  does 
them  good. 

It  is  this  inability  to  admire  which  is  the  whole 
defect  of  Tolstoy,  and  it  arises  from  his  indomit- 
able pride,  which  is  the  strength  of  his  character, 
and  causes  him  to  tower  like  a  giant  over  all  his 
contemporaries.  Therefore,  in  reviewing  his  whole 
work   and  his  whole  life,  and   in  reviewing  it  in 

^  The  popular  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  in  Russian  prose,  with 
rough  coloured  pictures,  is  published  by  the  Tipografia,  T.  D,  Sitin, 
Piatnitzkaia  Oolitza,  Moscow. 

H  113 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

connection  with  that  of  his  contemporaries,  one 
comes  to  this  conclusion.  If  Tolstoy,  being  as 
great  as  he  is,  has  this  great  limitation,  we  can 
only  repeat  the  platitude  that  no  genius,  however 
great,  is  without  limitations ;  no  ruby  without  a 
flaw.  Were  it  otherwise — Had  there  been  com- 
bined with  Tolstoy's  power  and  directness  of  vision 
and  creative  genius,  the  large  love  and  the  childlike 
simplicity  of  Dostoievsky — we  should  have  had, 
united  in  one  man,  the  complete  expression  of  the 
Russian  race ;  that  is  to  say,  we  should  have 
had  a  complete  man — which  is  impossible. 

Tourgeniev,  on  the  other  hand,  is  full  to  the 
brim  of  the  power  of  admiration  and  appreciation 
which  Tolstoy  lacks ;  but  then  he  also  lacks 
Tolstoy's  strength  and  power.  Dostoievsky  has 
a  power  different  from  Tolstoy's,  but  equal  in 
scale,  and  titanic.  He  has  a  power  of  admira- 
tion, an  appreciation  wider  and  deeper  than 
Tourgeniev's,  and  the  humility  of  a  man  who 
has  descended  into  hell,  who  has  been  face  to 
face  with  the  sufferings  and  the  agonies  of 
humanity  and  the  vilest  aspects  of  human 
nature ;  who,  far  from  losing  his  faith  in  the 
divine,  has  detected  it  in  every  human  being, 
however  vile,  and  in  every  circumstance,  how- 
ever hideous ;  and  who  in  dust  and  ashes  has 
felt  himself  face  to  face  with  God.  Yet,  in  spite 
of  aU  this,  Dostoievsky  is  far  from  being  the 
114 


TOLSTOY  AND  TOURGENIEV 

complete  expression  of  the  Russian  genius,  or  a 
complete  man.  His  limitations  are  as  great  as 
Tolstoy's ;  and  no  one  was  ever  more  conscious 
of  them  than  himself.  They  do  not  concern  us 
here.  What  does  concern  us  is  that  in  modern 
Russian  literature,  in  the  literature  of  this  cen- 
tury, leaving  the  poets  out  of  the  question,  the 
two  great  figures,  the  two  great  columns  which 
support  the  temple  of  Russian  literature,  are 
Tolstoy  and  Dostoievsky.  Tourgeniev's  place 
is  inside  that  temple ;  there  he  has  a  shrine  and 
an  altar  which  are  his  own,  which  no  one  can 
dispute  with  him,  and  which  are  bathed  in  serene 
radiance  and  visited  by  shy  visions  and  voices  of 
haunting  loveliness.  But  neither  as  a  writer  nor 
as  a  man  can  he  be  called  the  great  representa- 
tive of  even  half  the  Russian  genius ;  for  he 
complements  the  genius  of  neither  Tolstoy  nor 
Dostoievsky.  He  possesses  in  a  minor  degree 
qualities  which  they  both  possessed ;  and  the 
qualities  which  are  his  and  his  only,  exquisite  as 
they  are,  are  not  of  the  kind  which  belong  to 
the  greatest  representatives  of  a  nation  or  of  a 
race. 


IIS 


CHAPTER    V 
THE   PLACE   OF  TOURGENIEV 

IN  the  preceding  I  have  tried  very  briefly  to 
point  out  the  state  of  the  barometer  of  public 
opinion  (the  barometer  of  the  average  educated  man 
and  not  of  any  exclusive  clique)  with  regard  to 
Tourgeniev's  reputation  in  Russia  at  the  present  day. 
That  and  no  more.  I  have  not  devoted  a 
special  chapter  in  this  book  to  Tourgeniev  for  the 
reasons  I  have  already  stated :  namely,  that  his 
work  is  better  known  in  England  than  most  other 
Russian  classics,  and  that  admirable  appreciations 
of  his  work  exist  already,  written  by  famous  critics, 
such  as  Mr.  Henry  James  and  M.  Melchior  de 
Vogue.  There  is  in  England,  among  people  who 
care  for  literature  and  who  study  the  literature  of 
Europe,  a  perfectly  definite  estimate  of  Tourgeniev. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  I  confined  myself  to 
trying  to  elucidate  what  the  average  Russian  thinks 
to-day  about  Tourgeniev  compared  with  other 
Russian  writers,  and  to  noticing  any  changes  which 
have  come  about  with  regard  to  the  estimate  of 
his  work  in  Russia  and  in  Europe  during  the  last 
twenty  years.  I  thought  this  was  sufficient. 
ii6 


THE  PLACE  OF  TOURGENIEV 

But  I  now  realise  from  several  able  criticisms 
on  my  study  of  Tolstoy  and  Tourgeniev  when  it 
appeared  in  the  Quarterly  Reviezv,  that  I  had  laid 
myself  open  to  be  misunderstood.  It  was  taken 
for  granted  in  several  quarters  not  only  that  I 
underrated  Tourgeniev  as  a  writer,  but  that  I 
wished  to  convey  the  impression  that  his  reputa- 
tion was  a  bubble  that  had  burst.  Nothing  was 
farther  from  my  intention  than  this.  And  here 
lies  the  great  danger  of  trying  to  talk  of  any 
foreign  writer  from  the  point  of  view  of  that 
writer's  country  and  not  from  that  of  your  own 
country.  You  are  instantly  misunderstood.  For 
instance,  if  you  say  Alfred  de  Musset  is  not  so 
much  admired  now  in  France  as  he  used  to  be 
in  the  sixties,  the  English  reader,  who  may  only 
recently  have  discovered  Alfred  de  Musset,  and, 
indeed,  may  be  approaching  French  poetry  as  a 
whole  for  the  first  time,  at  once  retorts  :  "  There 
is  a  man  who  is  depreciating  one  of  France's 
greatest  writers  !  " 

Now  what  I  wish  to  convey  with  regard  to 
Tourgeniev  is  simply  this : 

Firstly,  that  although  he  is  and  always  will 
remain  a  Russian  classic,  he  is  not,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  so  enthusiastically  admired  as  he  used 
to  be :  new  writers  have  risen  since  his  time  (not 
necessarily  better  ones,  but  men  who  have  opened 
windows  on  undreamed-of  vistas) ;  and  not  only  this, 

117 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

but  one  of  his  own  contemporaries,  Dostoievsky, 
has  been  brought  into  a  larger  and  clearer  light  of 
fame  than  he  enjoyed  in  his  lifetime,  owing  to  the 
dissipation  of  the  mists  of  political  prejudices  and 
temporary  and  local  polemics,  differences,  quarrels 
and  controversies. 

But  the  English  reader  has,  as  a  general  rule, 
never  got  farther  than  Tourgeniev.  He  is 
generally  quite  unacquainted  with  the  other 
Russian  classics  ;  and  so  when  it  is  said  that  there 
are  others  greater  than  he — Dostoievsky  and 
Gogol,  for  instance, — the  English  reader  thinks  an 
attempt  is  being  made  to  break  a  cherished  and 
holy  image.  And  if  he  admires  Tourgeniev, — 
which,  if  he  likes  Russian  literature  at  all  he  is 
almost  sure  to  do, — it  makes  him  angry. 

Secondly,  I  wish  to  say  that  owing  to  the 
generally  prevailing  limited  view  of  the  educated 
intellectual  Englishman  as  to  the  field  of  Russian 
literature  as  a  whole,  I  do  think  he  is  inclined  to 
overrate  the  genius  and  position  of  Tourgeniev  in 
Russian  literature,  great  as  they  are.  There  is,  I 
think,  an  exaggerated  cult  for  Tourgeniev  among 
intellectual  Englishmen.^  The  case  of  Tennyson 
seems  to  me  to  afford  a  very  close  parallel  to  that 
of  Tourgeniev. 

Mr.  Gosse  pointed  out  not  long  ago  in  a  subtle 

^  See,  for  instance,  Mr.  Frank  Harris  in  his  Shakespeai-e  the  Man  : 
His  Tragedy.     See  footnote,  p.  124. 

118 


THE   PLACE  OF  TOURGENIEV 

and  masterly  article  that  Tennyson,  although  we 
were  now  celebrating  his  centenary,  had  not 
reached  that  moment  when  a  poet  is  rapturously 
rediscovered  by  a  far  younger  generation  than  his 
own,  but  that  he  had  reached  that  point  when  the 
present  generation  felt  no  particular  excitement 
about  his  work.  This  seems  to  me  the  exact 
truth  about  Tourgeniev's  reputation  in  Russia  at 
the  present  day.  Everybody  has  read  him,  and 
everybody  will  always  read  him  because  he  is  a 
classic  and  because  he  has  written  immortal  things, 
but  now,  in  the  year  1909,  there  is  no  particular 
excitement  about  Fathers  and  Sons  in  Russia : 
just  as  now  there  is  no  particular  excitement  about 
the  "  Idylls  of  the  King"  or  "  In  Memoriam  "  in 
England  to-day.  Tourgeniev  has  not  yet  been 
rediscovered. 

Of  course,  there  are  some  critics  who  in  "  the 
fearless  old  fashion  "  say  boldly  that  Tennyson's 
reputation  is  dead  ;  that  he  exists  no  longer,  and 
that  we  need  not  trouble  to  mention  him.  I  read 
some  such  sweeping  pronouncement  not  long 
ago  by  an  able  journalist.  There  are  doubtless 
Russian  critics  who  say  the  same  about  Tour- 
geniev. As  to  whether  they  are  right  or  wrong, 
I  will  not  bother  myself  or  my  readers,  but  I  do 
wish  to  make  it  as  clear  as  daylight  that  I  myself 
hold  no  such  opinion  either  with  regard  to 
Tourgeniev  or  to  Tennyson. 
119 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

I  believe  Tennyson  to  have  written  a  great 
quantity  of  immortal  and  magnificently  beautiful 
verse.  I  believe  that  Tennyson  possesses  an  en- 
during throne  in  the  Temple  of  English  poets. 
I  believe  Tourgeniev  to  have  written  a  great 
quantity  of  immortal  and  inexpressibly  beautiful 
prose,  and  I  believe  that  he  will  hold  an  enduring 
seat  in  the  Temple  of  Russian  literature.  I  think 
this  is  clear.  But  supposing  a  Russian  critic  were 
to  write  on  the  English  literature  and  the  English 
taste  of  the  present  day,  and  supposing  he  were 
to  say,  "  Of  course,  as  we  Russians  all  feel,  there 
is  only  one  English  poet  in  the  English  literature 
of  the  last  hundred  years,  and  that  is  Tennyson. 
Tennyson  is  the  great  and  only  representative  of 
English  art ;  the  only  writer  who  has  expressed 
the  English  soul."  We  should  then  suspect  he 
had  never  studied  the  works  of  Wordsworth, 
Shelley,  Byron,  Keats,  Coleridge,  Browning  and 
Swinburne.  Well,  this,  it  seems  to  me,  is  exactly 
how  Tourgeniev  is  treated  in  England.  All  I 
wished  to  point  out  was  that  the  point  of  view  of 
a  Russian  was  necessarily  different,  owing  to  his 
larger  field  of  vision  and  to  the  greater  extent  and 
depth  of  his  knowledge,  and  to  his  closer  com- 
munion with  the  work  of  his  national  authors. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  it  was  taken  for  granted  by 
some  people  that  I  wished  to  show  that  Tourgeniev 
was  not  a  classic.      I  will  therefore,  at  the  risk  of 

120 


THE  PLACE  OF  TOURGENIEV 

wearying  my  readers,  repeat — with  as  much  varia- 
tion as  I  can  muster — what  1  consider  to  be  some 
of  Tourgeniev's  special  claims  to  enduring  fame. 

I  have  said  he  was  a  great  poet ;  but  the  words 
seem  bare  and  dead  when  one  considers  the 
peculiar  nature  of  the  shy  and  entrancing  poetry 
that  is  in  Tourgeniev's  work.  He  has  the  magic 
that  water  gives  to  the  reflected  images  of  trees, 
hills  and  woods ;  he  touches  the  ugly  facts  of 
life,  softens  and  transfigures  them  so  that  they 
lose  none  of  their  reality,  but  gain  a  majesty  and 
a  mystery  that  comes  from  beyond  the  world,  just 
as  the  moonlight  softens  and  transfigures  the 
wrinkled  palaces  and  decaying  porticoes  of  Venice, 
hiding  what  is  sordid,  heightening  the  beauty  of 
line,  and  giving  a  quality  of  magic  to  every  stately 
building,  to  each  delicate  pillar  and  chiselled  arch. 

Then  there  is  in  his  work  a  note  of  wistful 
tenderness  that  steals  into  the  heart  and  fills 
it  with  an  incommunicable  pleasureable  sadness, 
as  do  the  songs  you  hear  in  Russia  on  dark 
summer  nights  in  the  villages,  or,  better  still,  on 
the  broad  waters  of  some  huge  silent  river, — songs 
aching  with  an  ecstasy  of  homesickness,  songs 
which  are  something  half-way  between  the  whining 
sadness  of  Oriental  music  and  the  rippling  plaintive- 
ness  of  Irish  and  Scotch  folk-song;  songs  that 
are  imperatively  melodious,  but  strange  to  us  in 
their  rhythm,  constantly  changing  yet  subordinated 

121 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

to  definite  law,  varying  indeed  with  an  invariable 
law ;  songs  whose  notes,  without  being  definitely- 
sharp  or  flat,  seem  a  little  bit  higher,  or  a  shade 
lower  than  you  expect,  and  in  which  certain  notes 
come  over  and  over  again  with  an  insistent  appeal, 
a  heartbreaking  iteration,  and  an  almost  intolerable 
pathos ;  songs  which  end  abruptly  and  suddenly, 
so  that  you  feel  that  they  are  meant  to  begin 
again  at  once  and  to  go  on  for  ever. 

This  is  how  Tourgeniev's  poetical  quality — 
as  manifested  in  his  Sportsman' s  Sketches,  his 
Poems  in  Prose,  and  in  many  other  of  his  works — 
strikes  me.  But  I  doubt  if  any  one  unacquainted 
with  the  Russian  language  would  derive  such 
impressions,  for  it  is  above  all  things  Tourgeniev's 
language — the  words  he  uses  and  the  way  in  which 
he  uses  them — that  is  magical.  Every  sentence 
is  a  phrase  of  perfect  melody ;  limpid,  simple 
and  sensuous.  And  all  this  must  necessarily 
half  disappear  in  a  translation,  however  good. 

But  then  Tourgeniev  is  not  only  a  poet.  He 
is  a  great  novelist  and  something  more  than 
a  great  novelist.  He  has  recorded  for  all  time 
the  atmosphere  of  a  certain  epoch.  He  has  done 
for  Russia  what  Trollope  did  for  England:  he 
has  exactly  conveyed  the  atmosphere  and  the 
tone  of  the  fifties.  The  characters  of  Trollope 
and  Tourgeniev  are  excelled  by  those  of  other 
writers — and   I   do  not  mean  to  put  Tourgeniev 

122 


THE  PLACE  OF  TOURGENIEV 

on  the  level  of  Trollope,  because  Tourgeniev  is 
an  infinitely  greater  writer  and  an  artist  of  an 
altogether  higher  order — ;  but  for  giving  the 
general  picture  and  atmosphere  of  England  during 
the  fifties,  I  do  not  believe  any  one  has  excelled 
Trollope  ;  and  for  giving  the  general  atmosphere  of 
the  fifties  in  Russia,  of  a  certain  class,  I  do  not 
believe  any  one- — with  the  possible  exception  of 
Aksakov,  the  Russian  Trollope, — has  excelled  what 
Tourgeniev  did  in  his  best  known  books,  Fathers 
and  Sons,  Virgin  Soil,  and  ^  House  of  Gentlefolk. 
Then,  of  course,  Tourgeniev  has  gifts  of  shrewd 
characterisation,  the  power  of  creating  delightful 
women,  gifts  of  pathos  and  psychology,  and  artistic 
gifts  of  observation  and  selection,  the  whole  being 
always  illumined  and  refined  by  the  essential 
poetry  of  his  temperament,  and  the  magical 
manner  in  which,  like  an  inspired  conductor 
leading  an  orchestra  of  delicate  wood  and  wind 
instruments,  he  handles  the  Russian  language. 
But  when  it  comes  to  judging  who  has  interpreted 
more  truly  Russian  life  as  a  whole,  and  who  has 
gazed  deepest  into  the  Russian  soul  and  expressed 
most  truly  and  fully  what  is  there,  then  I  can 
but  repeat  that  I  think  he  falls  far  short  of 
Tolstoy,  in  the  one  case,  and  of  Dostoievsky, 
in  the  other.  Judged  as  a  whole,  I  think  he 
is  far  excelled,  for  different  reasons,  by  Tolstoy, 
Dostoievsky,  and  by  Gogol,  who  surpasses  him 
123 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

immeasurably  alike  in  imagination,  humour  and 
truth.  I  have  endeavoured  to  explain  why  in 
various  portions  of  this  book.  I  will  not  add 
anything  further  here,  and  I  only  hope  that  I 
have  made  it  sufficiently  clear  that  although  I 
admire  other  Russian  writers  more  than  Tour- 
geniev,  I  am  no  image-breaker ;  and  that  although 
I  worship  more  fervently  at  other  altars,  I  never 
for  a  moment  intended  either  to  deny  or  to 
depreciate  the  authentic  ray  of  divine  light  that 
burns  in  Tourgeniev's  work.^ 

^  The  most  striking  instance  I  have  come  across  lately  of  the  cult 
for  Tourgeniev  in  England  is  in  Mr.  Frank  Harris'  remarkable 
book  on  Shakespeare.  He  illustrates  his  thesis  that  Shakespeare 
could  not  create  a  manly  character,  by  saying  that  Shakespeare 
could  not  have  drawn  a  Bazarov  or  a  Marianna.  Leaving  the 
thesis  out  of  the  discussion,  it  is  to  me  almost  incredible  that  any 
one  could  think  Tourgeniev's  characters  manly,  compared  with 
those  of  Shakespeare.  Tourgeniev  played  a  hundred  variations  on 
the  theme  of  the  minor  Hamlet.  He  painted  a  whole  gallery 
of  little  Hamlets.  Baza^'ov  attains  his  strength  at  the  expense 
of  intellectual  nihilism,  but  he  is  a  neuropath  compared  with 
Mercutio.  And  Bazarov  is  the  only  one  of  Tourgeniev's  characters 
(and  Tourgeniev's  acutest  critics  agree  with  this, — see  Bruckner 
and  Vogue)  that  has  strength.  Tourgeniev  could  no  more 
have  created  a  Falstafif  than  he  could  have  flown.  Where  are 
these  manly  characters  of  Tourgeniev?  Who  are  they?  Indeed 
a  Russian  critic  lately  pointed  out,  a  propos  of  Tchekov,  that  the 
whole  of  Russian  politics,  literature,  and  art,  during  the  latter  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  suffered  from  the  misfortune  of  there  being 
so  many  such  Hamlets  and  so  few  Fortinbrases.  I  am  convinced 
that  had  Mr.  Harris  been  a  Russian,  or  had  Tourgeniev  been  an 
Englishman,  Mr.  Harris  would  not  have  held  these  \aews. 


124 


CHAPTER    IV 
DOSTOIEVSKY 

**  In  nobler  books  we  are  moved  with  something  like  the  emotions 
of  life  ;  and  this  emotion  is  very  variously  provoked.  We  are  moved 
when  Levine  labours  in  the  field,  when  Andre  sinks  beyond  emotion, 
when  Richard  Feverel  and  Lucy  Desborough  meet  beside  the  river, 
when  Antony,  not  cowardly,  puts  off  his  helmet,  when  Kent  has 
infinite  pity  on  the  dying  Lear,  when  in  Dostoiefsky's  Despised  and 
Rejected,  the  uncomplaining  hero  drains  his  cup  of  suffering  and 
virtue.     These  are  notes  which  please  the  great  heart  of  man." 

R.  L.  Stevenson,  Across  the  Plains 

' '  Raskolnikoff  ( Crime  and  Punishment)  is  easily  the  greatest  book 
I  have  read  in  ten  years.  ...  I  divined  ...  the  existence  of  a 
certain  impotence  in  many  minds  of  to-day  which  prevents  them 
from  living  in  a  book  or  a  character  and  keeps  them  afar  off, 
spectators  of  a  puppet  show.  To  such  I  [suppose  the  book  may 
seem  empty  in  the  centre  ;  to  the  others  it  is  a  room,  a  house  of  life, 
into  which  they  themselves  enter,  and  are  tortured  and  purified.  .  .  . 

"Another  has  been  translated — Humilies  et  offenses.  It  is  even 
more  incoherent  than  Le  Crime  et  le  Chdtiment,  but  breathes  much 
oi  the  same  lovely  goodness.^' '^  R.  L.  Stevenson,  Letters 

I 

Introductory 

IN  the  autumn  of  1897  I  was  staying  in  the 
South  of  Russia  at  the  house  of  a  gentleman 
who  has  played  no  unimportant  part  in  Russian 
politics.      We  were  sitting  one  evening  at  tea,  a 

1  These  italics  are  mine. 
125 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

party  of  nearly  thirty  people  round  the  table, 
consisting  of  country  gentlemen,  neighbours  and 
friends.  The  village  doctor  was  present :  he  was 
an  ardent  Tolstoyist,  and  not  only  an  admirer  of 
Tolstoy's  genius,  but  a  disciple,  and  a  believer  in  his 
religious  teaching.  He  had  been  talking  on  this 
subject  for  some  time,  and  expressing  his  hero- 
worship  in  emphatic  terms,  when  the  son  of  my 
host,  a  boy  at  school,  only  seventeen  years  of 
age,  yet  familiar  with  the  literature  of  seven 
languages,  a  writer,  moreover,  of  both  English  and 
Russian  verse,  fired  up  and  said  : 

"  In  fifty  years'  time  we  Russians  shall  blush 
with  shame  to  think  that  we  gave  Tolstoy  such 
fulsome  admiration,  when  we  had  at  the  same 
time  a  genius  like  Dostoievsky,  the  latchet  of 
whose  shoes  Tolstoy  is  not  worthy  to  unloose." 

A  few  months  after  this  I  read  an  article 
on  Dostoievsky  in  one  of  the  literary  weeklies 
in  England,  in  which  the  writer  stated  that 
Dostoievsky  was  a  mere  fueilletonist,  a  concocter 
of  melodrama,  to  be  ranked  with  Eugene  Sue  and 
Xavier  de  Mont^pin.  I  was  struck  at  the  time 
by  the  divergence  between  English  and  Russian 
views  on  this  subject.  I  was  amazed  by  the  view 
of  the  English  critic  in  itself;  but  the  reason  that 
such  a  view  could  be  expressed  at  all  is  not  far 
to  seek,  since  there  is  at  this  moment  no  complete 
translation  of  Dostoievsky's  works  in  England,  and 
126 


* 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

no  literary  translation  of  the  same.  Only  one  of 
his  books,  Crime  and  Punishment^  is  known  at 
all,  and  the  rest  of  them  are  difficult  even  to 
obtain  in  the  English  language. 

However  this  may  be,  at  the  present  time 
Dostoievsky's  fame  in  Russia  is  every  day 
becoming  more  universally  and  more  emphatically 
recognised.  The  present  generation  are  inclined 
to  consider  him  the  greatest  of  all  their  novelists ; 
and  although  they  as  a  rule,  with  the  critic 
Merejkowski,  put  him  equal  with  Tolstoy  as 
one  of  the  two  great  pillars  which  uphold  the 
Temple  of  Russian  literature,  they  are  for  the 
most  part  agreed  in  thinking  that  he  was  a 
unique  product,  a  more  startling  revelation  and 
embodiment  of  genius,  a  greater  elemental  force, 
than  Tolstoy  or  any  other  Russian  writer  of  fiction. 
In  fact,  they  hold  the  same  view  about  him  that 
we  do  with  regard  to  Shelley  in  our  poetical 
literature.  We  may  not  think  that  Shelley  is 
a  greater  poet  than  Keats,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge 
or  Byron,  but  he  certainly  is  a  more  excep- 
tional incarnation  of  poetical  genius.  We  can 
imagine  poets  like  Keats  arising  again, — one  nearly 
akin  to  him  and  almost  equally  exquisite  did 
appear  in  the  shape  of  Tennyson.  We  can 
imagine  there  being  other  writers  who  would 
attain  to  Wordsworth's  simplicity  and  communion 
with  nature,  but  Shelley  has  as  yet  been  without 
127 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

kith  or  kindred,  without  mate  or  equal,  in  the 
whole  range  of  the  world's  literary  history.  He 
does  not  appear  to  us  like  a  plant  that  grows 
among  others,  differing  from  them  only  in  being 
more  beautiful  and  striking,  which  is  true  even 
of  poets  like  Shakespeare,  Dante  and  Goethe,  who 
reveal  in  the  highest  degree  qualities  which  other 
poets  possess  in  a  lesser  degree,  and  complete  and 
fulfil  what  the  others  aim  at  and  only  partially 
achieve;  but  Shelley  is  altogether  different  in 
kind :  he  aims  at  and  achieves  something  which 
is  beyond  the  range  and  beyond  the  ken  of  other 
poets.  It  is  as  though  he  were  not  a  man  at  all, 
but  an  embodiment  of  certain  elemental  forces. 

So  it  is  with  Dostoievsky.  And  for  this  reason 
those  who  admire  him  do  so  passionately  and 
extravagantly.  It  must  not  be  thought  that  they 
do  not  discern  his  faults,  his  incompleteness, 
and  his  limitations,  but  the  positive  qualities 
that  he  possesses  seem  to  them  matchless,  and 
so  precious,  so  rare,  so  tremendous,  that  they 
annihilate  all  petty  criticism.  The  example  of 
Shelley  may  again  serve  us  here.  Only  a  pedant, 
in  the  face  of  such  flights  of  genius  as  "  The  Cloud," 
the  "Ode  to  the  West  Wind,"  "The  Sensitive 
Plant,"  or  that  high  pageant  of  grief,  fantasy,  of 
"  thoughts  that  breathe  and  words  that  burn," — 
"  Adonais," — would  apply  a  magnifying  glass  to 
such  poems  and  complain  of  the  occasional  lapses 
128 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

of  style  or  of  the  mistakes  in  grammar  which  may 
be  found  in  them.  These  poems  may  be  full  of 
trivial  lapses  of  this  kind,  but  such  matters  are 
of  small  account  when  a  poet  has  evoked  for 
us  a  vision  of  what  dwells  beyond  the  veil  of 
the  senses,  and  struck  chords  of  a  music  which 
has  the  power  and  the  wonder  of  a  miracle. 

With  Dostoievsky  the  case  is  somewhat  but 
not  in  all  respects  similar.  He  possesses  a 
certain  quality  w^hich  is  different  in  kind  from 
those  of  any  other  writer,  a  power  of  seeming  to 
get  nearer  to  the  unknown,  to  what  lies  beyond 
the  flesh,  which  is  perhaps  the  secret  of  his 
amazing  strength ;  and,  besides  this,  he  has 
certain  great  qualities  which  other  writers,  and 
notably  other  Russian  writers,  possess  also ; 
but  he  has  them  in  so  far  higher  a  degree 
that  when  seen  with  other  writers  he  anni- 
hilates them.  The  combination  of  this  difference 
in  kind  and  this  difference  in  degree  makes 
something  so  strong  and  so  tremendous,  that 
it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  when  we  find  many 
critics  saying  that  Dostoievsky  is  not  only  the 
greatest  of  all  Russian  writers,  but  one  of  the 
greatest  writers  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  I 
am  not  exaggerating  when  I  say  that  such  views 
are  held  ;  for  instance.  Professor  Bruckner,  a  most 
level-headed  critic,  in  his  learned  and  exhaustive 
survey  of  Russian  literature,  says  that  it  is  not  in 
I  129 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Faust,  but  rather  in  Crime  and  Punishment,  that 
the  whole  grief  of  mankind  takes  hold  of  us. 

Even  making  allowance  for  the  enthusiasm  of 
his  admirers,  it  is  true  to  say  that  almost  any- 
Russian  judge  of  literature  at  the  present  day 
would  place  Dostoievsky  as  being  equal  to  Tolstoy 
and  immeasurably  above  Tourgeniev ;  in  fact,  the 
ordinary  Russian  critic  at  the  present  day  no  more 
dreams  of  comparing  Tourgeniev  with  Dostoievsky, 
than  it  would  occur  to  an  Englishman  to  compare 
Charlotte  Yonge  with  Charlotte  Bronte. 

Dostoievsky's  fame  came  late,  although  his 
first  book,  Poor  Folk,  made  a  considerable  stir, 
and  the  publication  of  his  Crime  and  Punishment 
ensured  his  popularity.  But  when  I  say  "  fame," 
I  mean  the  universal  recognition  of  him  by  the 
best  and  most  competent  judges.  This  recogni- 
tion is  now  an  accomplished  fact  in  Russia  and 
also  in  Germany.  The  same  cannot  be  said 
positively  of  France,  although  his  books  are  for 
the  most  part  well  translated  into  French,  and 
have  received  the  warmest  and  the  most  acute  ap- 
preciation at  the  hands  of  a  French  critic,  namely, 
M.  de  Vogud  in  Le  Roman  Russe.  ^  In  England, 
Dostoievsky  cannot  be  said  to  be  known  at  all, 
since  the  translations  of  his  works  are  not  only 
inadequate,  but  scarce  and  difficult  to  obtain,  and 

^  No  finer  estimate  of  Dostoievsky's  genius  exists  than  M.  de 
Vogue's  introduction  to  La  Mai  son  des  Moris. 

130 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

it  is  possible  to  come  across  the  most  amazing 
judgments  pronounced  on  them  by  critics  whose 
judgment  on  other  subjects  is  excellent.^  The 
reason  of  this  tardy  recognition  of  Dostoievsky 
in  his  own  country  is  that  he  was  one  of  those 
men  whose  innate  sense  of  fairness  and  hatred  of 
cant  prevent  them  from  whole-heartedly  joining 
a  political  party  and  swallowing  its  tenets 
indiscriminately,  even  when  some  of  these  tenets 
are  nonsensical  and  iniquitous.  He  was  one  of 
those  men  who  put  truth  and  love  higher  than 
any  political  cause,  and  can  fight  for  such  a 
cause  only  when  the  leaders  of  it,  in  practice  as 
well  as  in  theory,  never  deviate  from  the  one 
or  the  other.  He  was  between  two  fires :  the"^ 
Government  considered  him  a  revolutionary,  and 
the  revolutionaries  thought  him  a  retrograde ; 
because  he  refused  to  be  blind  to  the  merits 
of  the  Government,  such  as  they  were,  and 
equally  refused  to  be  blind  to  the  defects  of 
the  enemies  of  the  Government.  He  therefore 
attacked  not  only  the  Government,  but  the' 
Government's  enemies ;  and  when  he  attacked,  it 
was  with  thunderbolts.  The  Liberals  never  forgave 
him  this.  Dostoievsky  was  unjustly  condemned 
to  spend  four  years  in  penal  servitude  for  a  political 
crime  ;  for  having  taken  part  in  a  revolutionary  pro- 

^  This  is,  of  course,  not  universal.     See  Mr.  Gosse's  Qtiestions 
at  Issue, 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

paganda.  He  returned  from  Siberia  a  Slavophil, 
and,  I  will  not  say  a  Conservative,  as  the  word  is 
misleading ;  but  a  man  convinced  not  only  of  the 
futility  of  revolution,  but  also  of  the  worthlessness 
of  a  great  part  of  the  revolutionaries.  Nor  did  the 
Liberals  ever  forgive  him  this.  They  are  only  just 
beginning  to  do  so  now.  Moreover,  in  one  of  his 
most  powerful  books,  The  Possessed,  he  draws  a 
scathing  picture  of  all  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of 
revolution,  and  not  only  of  the  worthless  hangers- 
on  who  are  the  parasites  of  any  such  movement, 
but  he  reveals  the  decadence  and  worthlessness 
of  some  of  the  men,  who  by  their  dominating 
character  played  leading  parts  and  were  popular 
heroes.  Still  less  did  the  Liberals  forgive  him 
this  book  ;  and  even  ,now,  few  Liberal  writers 
are  fair  towards  it.  j  Again,  Dostoievsky  was,  as 
I  shall  show  later,  by  nature  an  antagonist  of 
Socialism  and  a  hater  of  materialism  ;\  and  since 
all  the  leading  men  among  the  Liberals  of  his 
time  were  either  one  or  the  other,  if  not  both, 
Dostoievsky  aroused  the  enmity  of  the  whole 
Liberal  camp,  by  attacking  not  only  its  parasites 
but  its  leaders,  men  of  high  principle  such  as 
Bielinsky,  who  were  obviously  sincere  and  deserv- 
ing of  the  highest  consideration  and  respect. 
One  can  imagine  a  similar  situation  in  England 
if  at  the  present  time  there  were  an  autocratic 
government,  a  backward  and  ignorant  peasantry, 
132 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

and  a  small  and  Liberal  movement  carried  on  by 
a  minority  of  extremely  intellectual  men,  headed, 
let  us  say,  by  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  Lord  Morley, 
Professor  Raleigh,  and  Sir  J.  J.  Thomson.  I 
purposely  take  men  of  widely  different  opinions, 
because  in  a  country  where  there  is  a  fight  going 
on  for  a  definite  thing,  such  as  a  Constitution, 
there  is  a  moment  when  men,  who  under  another 
regime  would  be  split  up  into  Liberals  and 
Conservatives,  are  necessarily  grouped  together 
in  one  big  Liberal  camp.  Now,  let  us  suppose 
that  the  men  who  were  carrying  on  this  pro- 
paganda for  reform  were  undergoing  great 
sacrifices ;  let  us  likewise  suppose  them  to  be 
Socialists  and  materialists  to  the  core.  Then 
suppose  there  should  appear  a  novelist  of  con- 
spicuous power,  such  as  George  Meredith  or 
Mr.  Thomas  Hardy  or  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  who 
by  some  error  was  sent  to  Botany  Bay  for  having 
been  supposed  to  be  mixed  up  with  a  revolu- 
tionary propaganda,  and  on  his  return  announced 
that  he  was  an  Anti-Revolutionary,  violently 
attacked  Mr.  Shaw,  wrote  a  book  in  which  he 
caricatured  him,  and  drew  a  scathing  portrait 
of  all  his  disciples, — especially  of  the  less  in- 
telligent among  them.  One  can  imagine  how 
unpopular  such  an  author  would  be  in  Liberal 
circles.  This  was  the  case  of  Dostoievsky  in 
Russia.  It  is  only  fair  to  add  that  his  genius 
133 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

has  now  obtained  full  recognition,  even  at  the 
hands  of  Liberals,  though  they  still  may  not  be 
able  to  tolerate  his  book,  The  Possessed.  But 
considering  the  magnitude  of  his  genius,  this 
recognition  has  been,  on  the  whole,  a  tardy  one. 
For  instance,  even  in  so  valuable  a  book  as 
Prince  Kropotkin's  Ideals  and  Realities  in  Russian 
Literatm^e^  Dostoievsky  receives  inadequate  treat- 
ment and  scanty  appreciation.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  Merejkowsky's  Tolstoy  and  Dostoievsky^ 
Merejkowsky,  who  is  also  a  Liberal,  praises 
Dostoievsky  with  complete  comprehension  and 
with  brilliance  of  thought  and  expression. 


II 

Dostoievsky's  Life 

Dostoievsky  was  the  son  of  a  staff-surgeon  and 
a  tradesman's  daughter.  He  was  born  in  a 
charity  hospital,  the  "  Maison  de  Dieu,"  at  Moscow, 
in  1 8  2  I .  He  was,  as  he  said,  a  member  of  a  stray 
family.  His  father  and  five  children  lived  in  a 
flat  consisting  of  two  rooms  and  a  kitchen.  The 
nursery  of  the  two  boys,  Michael  and  Fedor,  con- 
sisted of  a  small  part  of  the  entrance  hall,  which  was 
partitioned  off.  His  family  belonged  to  the  lowest 
ranks  of  the  nobility,  to  that  stratum  of  society 
which    supplied   the  bureaucracy   with   its    minor 

134 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

public  servants.  The  poverty  surrounding  his 
earliest  years  was  to  last  until  the  day  of  his 
death. 

Some  people  are,  as  far  as  money  is  concerned, 
like  a  negative  pole — money  seems  to  fly  away 
from  them,  or  rather,  when  it  comes  to  them,  to 
be  unable  to  find  any  substance  it  can  cleave  to. 
Dostoievsky  was  one  of  these  people ;  he  never 
knew  how  much  money  he  had,  and  when  he  had 
any,  however  little,  he  gave  it  away.  He  was 
what  the  French  call  2.  pastier  per c^  \  money  went 
through  him  as  through  a  sieve.  And  however 
much  money  he  had,  it  was  never  he  but  his 
friends  who  benefited  by  it. 

He  received  his  earliest  education  at  a  small 
school  in  Moscow,  where  a  schoolmaster  who 
taught  Russian  inspired  him  and  his  brother 
with  a  love  of  literature,  of  Pushkin's  poetry 
and  other  writers,  introduced  him  also  to 
the  works  of  Walter  Scott,  and  took  him  to 
see  a  performance  of  Schiller's  Robbers,  When 
his  preliminary  studies  were  ended,  he  was  sent 
with  his  brother  to  a  school  of  military  engineers 
at  St.  Petersburg.  Here  his  interest  in  literature, 
which  had  been  first  aroused  by  coming  into  contact 
with  Walter  Scott's  works,  was  further  developed 
by  his  discovery  of  Balzac,  George  Sand,  and 
Homer.  Dostoievsky  developed  a  passionate  love 
of  literature  and  poetry.  His  favourite  author 
135 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

was  Gogol.  He  left  this  school  in  1 843  at  the  age 
of  twenty-three,  with  the  rank  of  sub-lieutenant. 

His  first  success  in  literature  was  his  novel, 
Poor  Folk  (published  in  1846),  which  he  possibly 
began  to  write  while  he  was  still  at  school  He 
sent  this  work  to  a  review  and  awaited  the  result, 
utterly  hopeless  of  its  being  accepted.  One 
day,  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  just  when 
Dostoievsky  was  despairing  of  success  and  think- 
ing of  suicide,  Nekrasov  the  poet,  and  Grigorovitch 
the  critic,  came  to  him  and  said :  "  Do  you 
understand  yourself  what  you  have  written  ?  To 
have  written  such  a  book  you  must  have  possessed 
the  direct  inspiration  of  an  artist." 

This,  said  Dostoievsky,  was  the  happiest 
moment  of  his  life.  The  book  was  published  in 
Nekrasov's  newspaper,  and  was  highly  praised  on 
all  sides.  He  thus  at  once  made  a  name  in 
literature.  But  as  though  Fate  wished  to  lose  no 
time  in  proving  to  him  that  his  life  would  be  a 
series  of  unending  struggles,  his  second  story, 
The  Double,  was  a  failure,  and  his  friends  turned 
from  him,  feeling  that  they  had  made  a  mistake. 
From  that  time  onward,  his  literary  career  was  a 
desperate  battle,  not  only  with  poverty  but  also 
with  public  opinion,  and  with  political  as  well  as 
with  literary  critics. 

Dostoievsky  suffered  all  his  life  from  epilepsy. 
It  has  been  said  that  this  disease  was  brought  on 
136 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

by  his  imprisonment.  This  is  not  true :  the 
complaint  began  in  his  childhood,  and  one  of  his 
biographers  gives  a  hint  of  its  origin  :  "  It  dates 
back,"  he  writes,  "  to  his  earliest  youth,  and  is 
connected  with  a  tragic  event  in  their  family  life." 
This  sentence  affords  us  an  ominous  glimpse  into 
the  early  years  of  Dostoievsky,  for  it  must  indeed 
have  been  a  tragic  event  which  caused  him  to 
suffer  from  epileptic  fits  throughout  his  life. 

In  1 849  came  the  most  important  event  in 
Dostoievsky's  life.  From  1840  to  1847  there 
was  in  St.  Petersburg  a  group  of  young  men  who 
met  together  to  read  and  discuss  the  Liberal 
writers  such  as  Fourier,  Louis  Blanc  and  Prudhon. 
Towards  1847  these  circles  widened,  and  included 
officers  and  journalists :  they  formed  a  club  under 
the  leadership  of  Petrachevsky,  a  former  student, 
the  author  of  a  Dictionary  of  Foreign  Terms. 
The  club  consisted,  on  the  one  hand,  of  certain 
men,  followers  of  the  Decembrists  of  1825,  who 
aimed  at  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs  and  the 
establishment  of  a  Liberal  Constitution ;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  of  men  who  were  prede- 
cessors of  the  Nihilists,  and  who  looked  forward 
to  a  social  revolution.  The  special  function 
of  Dostoievsky  in  this  club  was  to  preach  the 
Slavophil  doctrine,  according  to  which  Russia, 
sociologically  speaking,  needed  no  Western  models, 
because  in  her  workmen's  guilds  and  her  system 
137 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

of  mutual  reciprocity  for  the  payment  of  taxes, 
she  already  possessed  the  means  of  realising  a 
superior  form  of  social  organisation. 

The  meetings  of  this  club  took  place  shortly 
after  the  revolutionary  movement  which  convulsed 
Western  Europe  in  1848.  The  Emperor  Nicholas, 
who  was  a  strong-minded  and  just  man,  imbued 
with  a  religious  conviction  that  he  was  appointed 
by  God  to  save  the  crumbling  world,  was  dream- 
ing of  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs,  and  by  a 
fatal  misunderstanding  was  led  to  strike  at  men 
whose  only  crime  was  that  they  shared  his  own 
aims  and  ideals.  One  evening  at  a  meeting  of  this 
club,  Dostoievsky  had  declaimed  Pushkin's  Ode 
on  the  Abolition  of  Serfdom,  when  some  one 
present  expressed  a  doubt  of  the  possibility  of 
obtaining  this  reform  except  by  insurrectionary 
means.  Dostoievsky  is  said  to  have  replied : 
"Then  insurrection  let  it  be!"  On  the  23rd 
of  April  1 849,  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
thirty-four  suspected  men  were  arrested.  The 
two  brothers  Dostoievsky  were  among  them. 
They  were  imprisoned  in  a  citadel,  where 
they  remained  for  eight  months.  On  the  22nd 
of  December,  Dostoievsky  was  conducted,  with 
twenty-one  others,  to  the  public  square,  where  a 
scaffold  had  been  erected.  The  other  prisoners 
had  been  released.  While  they  were  taking  their 
places  on  the  scaffold,  Dostoievsky  communicated 

138 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

the  idea  of  a  book  which  he  wished  to  write  to 
Prince  Monbelli,  one  of  his  fellow-prisoners,  who 
related  the  incident  later.  There  were,  that  day, 
2  I  degrees  of  frost  (Reaumur)  ;  the  prisoners  were 
stripped  to  their  shirts,  and  had  to  listen  to  their 
sentence  ;  the  reading  lasted  over  twenty  minutes  : 
the  sentence  was  that  they  were  to  be  shot. 
Dostoievsky  could  not  believe  in  the  reality  of  the 
event.  He  said  to  one  of  his  comrades :  "  Is  it 
possible  that  we  are  going  to  be  executed  ? " 
The  friend  of  whom  he  asked  the  question  pointed 
to  a  cart  laden  with  objects  which,  under  the 
tarpaulin  that  covered  them,  looked  like  coffins. 
The  Registrar  walked  down  from  the  scaffold  ; 
the  Priest  mounted  it,  taking  the  cross  with  him, 
and  bade  the  condemned  men  make  their  last 
confession.  Only  one  man,  of  the  shopkeeper 
class,  did  so :  the  others  contented  themselves 
with  kissing  the  cross.  Dostoievsky  thus  relates 
the  close  of  the  scene  in  a  letter  to  his  brother : 

"  They  snapped  swords  above  our  heads,  they 
made  us  put  on  the  long  white  shirts  worn  by 
persons  condemned  to  death.  We  were  bound  in 
parties  of  three  to  stakes  to  suffer  execution.  Being 
third  in  the  row,  I  concluded  that  I  had  only  a  few 
minutes  to  live.  I  thought  of  you  and  your  dear 
ones,  and  I  managed  to  kiss  PleshtcheevandDourov, 
who  were  next  to  me,  and  to  bid  them  farewell." 

The  officer  in  charge  had  already  commanded 
139 


LAxNDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

his  firing  party  to  load  ;  the  soldiers  were  already 
preparing  to  take  aim,  when  a  white  handkerchief 
was  waved  in  front  of  them.  They  lowered  their 
guns,  and  Dostoievsky  and  the  other  twenty-one 
learned  that  the  Emperor  had  cancelled  the  sen- 
tence of  the  military  tribunal,  and  commuted  the 
sentence  of  death  to  one  of  hard  labour  for  four 
years.  The  carts  really  contained  convict  uniforms, 
which  the  prisoners  had  to  put  on  at  once,  and 
they  started  then  and  there  for  Siberia.  When 
the  prisoners  were  unbound,  one  of  them,  Grigoriev, 
had  lost  his  reason.  Dostoievsky,  on  the  other 
hand,  afterwards  affirmed  that  this  episode  was 
his  salvation  ;  and  never,  either  on  account  of  this 
or  of  his  subsequent  imprisonment,  did  he  ever 
feel  or  express  anything  save  gratitude.  "  If  this 
catastrophe  had  not  occurred,"  said  Dostoievsky, 
alluding  to  his  sentence,  his  reprieve  and  his  sub- 
sequent imprisonment,  "  I  should  have  gone  mad." 
The  moments  passed  by  him  in  the  expectation 
of  immediate  death  had  an  ineffaceable  effect 
upon  his  entire  after-life.  They  shifted  his  angle 
of  vision  with  regard  to  the  whole  world.  He 
knew  something  that  no  man  could  know  who 
had  not  been  through  such  moments.  He  con- 
stantly alludes  to  the  episode  in  his  novels,  and 
in  The  Idiot  he  describes  it  thus,  through  the 
mouth  of  the  principal  character : 

"  I  will  tell  you  of  my  meeting  last  year  with  a 
140 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

certain  man ;  this  man  was  connected  with  a 
strange  circumstance,  strange  because  it  is  a 
very  unusual  one.  He  was  once  led,  together 
with  others,  on  to  the  scaffold,  and  a  sentence 
was  read  out  which  told  him  that  he  was  to 
be  shot  for  a  political  crime.  He  spent  the 
interval  between  the  sentence  and  the  reprieve, 
which  lasted  twenty  minutes,  or  at  least  a  quarter 
of  an  hour,  with  the  certain  conviction  that  in 
a  few  minutes  he  should  die.  I  was  very 
anxious  to  hear  how  he  would  recall  his  im- 
pressions. He  remembered  everything  with 
extraordinary  clearness,  and  said  that  he  would 
never  forget  a  single  one  of  those  minutes. 
Twenty  paces  from  the  scaffold  round  which  the 
crowd  and  the  soldiers  stood,  three  stakes  were 
driven  into  the  ground,  there  being  several 
prisoners.  The  first  three  were  led  to  the  stakes 
and  bound,  and  the  white  dress  of  the  condemned 
was  put  on  them.  This  consisted  of  a  long  white 
shirt,  and  over  their  eyes  white  bandages  were 
bound  so  that  they  should  not  see  the  guns. 
Then  in  front  of  each  stake  a  firing  party  was 
drawn  up.  My  friend  was  No.  8,  so  he  went  to 
the  stake  in  the  third  batch.  A  priest  carried  the 
cross  to  each  of  them.  My  friend  calculated  that 
he  had  five  minutes  more  to  live,  not  more.  He 
said  that  these  five  minutes  seemed  to  him  an 
endless  period,  infinitely  precious.  In  these  five 
141 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

minutes  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  would  have  so 
many  Hves  to  Hve  that  he  need  not  yet  begin  to 
think  about  his  last  moment,  and  in  his  mind 
he  made  certain  arrangements.  He  calculated 
the  time  it  would  take  him  to  say  good-bye  to 
his  comrades  ;  for  this  he  allotted  two  minutes.  He 
assigned  two  more  minutes  to  think  one  last  time 
of  himself,  and  to  look  round  for  the  last  time. 
He  remembered  distinctly  that  he  made  these 
three  plans,  and  that  he  divided  his  time  in  this 
way.  He  was  to  die,  aged  twenty-seven,  healthy 
and  strong,  after  having  said  good-bye  to  his 
companions.  He  remembered  that  he  asked  one  of 
them  a  somewhat  irrelevant  question,  and  was  much 
interested  in  the  answer.  Then,  after  he  had  said 
good-bye  to  his  comrades,  came  the  two  minutes 
which  he  had  set  aside  for  thinking  of  himself. 
He  knew  beforehand  of  what  he  would  think :  he 
wished  to  represent  to  himself  as  quickly  and  as 
clearly  as  possible  how  this  could  be :  that  now  he 
was  breathing  and  living,  and  that  in  three  minutes 
he  would  already  be  something  else,  some  one  or 
something,  but  what?  and  where?  All  this  he 
felt  he  could  decide  in  those  two  minutes.  Not 
far  away  was  the  church,  and  the  cathedral  with 
its  gilded  dome  was  glittering  in  the  sunshine. 
He  remembered  that  he  looked  at  the  dome 
with  terrible  persistence,  and  on  its  glittering  rays. 
He  could  not  tear  his  gaze  away  from  the 
142 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

rays.  It  seemed  to  him  somehow  that  these  rays 
were  his  new  nature,  and  that  in  three  minutes 
he  would  be  made  one  with  them.  The  uncer- 
tainty and  the  horror  of  the  unknown,  which  was 
so  near,  were  terrible.  But  he  said  that  during 
this  time  there  was  nothing  w^orse  than  the  un- 
ceasing thought :  *  What  if  I  do  not  die  ?  What  if 
life  were  restored  to  me  now  ?  What  an  eternity  ! 
And  all  this  would  be  mine.  I  would  in  that  case 
make  every  minute  into  a  century,  lose  nothing, 
calculate  every  moment,  and  not  spend  any  atom 
of  the  time  fruitlessly.'  He  said  that  this  thought 
at  last  made  him  so  angry  that  he  wished  that  they 
would  shoot  him  at  once." 

Dostoievsky's  sentence  consisted  of  four  years' 
hard  labour  in  the  convict  settlement  in  Siberia, 
and  this  ordeal  was  doubtless  the  most  precious 
boon  which  Providence  could  have  bestowed  on 
him.  When  he  started  for  prison  he  said  to 
A.  Milioukov,  as  he  wished  him  good-bye  :  "  The 
convicts  are  not  wild  beasts,  but  men  probably 
better,  and  perhaps  much  worthier,  than  myself. 
During  these  last  months  (the  months  of  his 
confinement  in  prison)  I  have  gone  through  a 
great  deal,  but  I  shall  be  able  to  write  about 
what  I  shall  see  and  experience  in  the  future." 
It  was  during  the  time  he  spent  in  prison  that 
Dostoievsky  really  found  himself.  To  share  the 
hard    labour    of   the   prisoners,   to    break   up  old 

143 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

ships,  to  carry  loads  of  bricks,  to  sweep  up  heaps 
of  snow,  strengthened  him  in  body  and  calmed 
his  nerves,  while  the  contact  with  murderers  and 
criminals  and  prisoners  of  all  kinds,  whose  inmost 
nature  he  was  able  to  reach,  gave  him  a  priceless 
opportunity  of  developing  the  qualities  which 
were  especially  his  own  both  as  a  writer  and  as 
a  man. 

With  the  criminals  he  was  not  in  the  position 
of  a  teacher,  but  of  a  disciple ;  he  learnt  from 
them,  and  in  his  life  with  them  he  grew  physically 
stronger,  and  found  faith,  certitude  and  peace. 

At  the  end  of  the  four  years  (in  1853)  he  was 
set  free  and  returned  to  ordinary  life,  strengthened 
in  body  and  better  balanced  in  mind.  He  had 
still  three  years  to  serve  in  a  regiment  as  a 
private  soldier,  and  after  this  period  of  service 
three  years  more  to  spend  in  Siberia.  In  1859 
he  crossed  the  frontier  and  came  back  to  Russia, 
and  was  allowed  to  live  first  at  Tver  and  then 
at  St.  Petersburg.  He  brought  a  wife  with  him, 
the  widow  of  one  of  his  former  colleagues  in  the 
Petrachevsky  conspiracy,  whom  he  had  loved  and 
married  in  Siberia.  Until  1865  he  worked  at 
journalism. 

Dostoievsky's    nature  was   alien   to    Socialism, 

and    he    loathed    the    moral    materialism    of   his 

Socialistic  contemporaries.      Petrachevsky  repelled 

him  because  he  was   an   atheist  and   laughed  at 

144 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

all  belief;  and  the  attitude  of  Bielinsky  towards 
religion,  which  was  one  of  flippant  contempt, 
awoke  in  Dostoievsky  a  passion  of  hatred  which 
blazed  up  whenever  he  thought  of  the  man. 
Dostoievsky  thus  became  a  martyr,  and  was 
within  an  ace  of  losing  his  life  for  the  revolutionary 
cause ;  a  movement  in  which  he  had  never  taken 
part,  and  in  which  he  disbelieved  all  his  life. 

Dostoievsky  returned  from  prison  just  at  the 
time  of  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs,  and  the 
trials  which  awaited  him  on  his  release  were 
severer  than  those  which  he  endured  during  his 
captivity.  In  January  1861  he  started  a  news- 
paper called  the  Vremya.  The  venture  was  a 
success.  But  just  as  he  thought  that  Fortune  was 
smiling  upon  him,  and  that  freedom  from  want 
was  drawing  near,  the  newspaper,  by  an  extra- 
ordinary misunderstanding,  was  prohibited  by  the 
censorship  for  an  article  on  Polish  affairs.  This 
blow,  like  his  condemnation  to  death,  was  due  to 
a  casual  blunder  in  the  official  machinery.  After 
considerable  efforts,  in  1864  he  started  another 
newspaper  called  the  Epocha.  This  newspaper 
incurred  the  wrath,  not  of  the  Government  censor- 
ship, but  of  the  Liberals ;  and  it  was  now  that  his 
peculiar  situation,  namely,  that  of  a  man  between 
two  fires,  became  evident.  The  Liberals  abused 
him  in  every  kind  of  manner,  went  so  far  as  to 
hint  that  the  Epocha  and   its  staff  were  Govern- 

K  145 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

ment  spies,  and  declared  that  Dostoievsky  was 
a  scribbler  with  whom  the  police  should  deal. 
At  this  same  time  his  brother  Michael,  his  best 
friend  Grigoriev,  who  was  on  the  staff  of  his 
newspaper,  and  his  first  wife,  Marie,  died  one 
after  another.  Dostoievsky  was  now  left  all 
alone ;  he  felt  that  his  whole  life  was  broken,  and 
that  he  had  nothing  to  live  for.  His  brother's 
family  was  left  without  resources  of  any  kind. 
He  tried  to  support  them  by  carrying  on  the 
publication  of  the  Epocha,  and  worked  day  and 
night  at  this,  being  the  sole  editor,  reading  all  the 
proofs,  dealing  with  the  authors  and  the  censor- 
ship, revising  articles,  procuring  money,  sitting 
up  till  six  in  the  morning,  and  sleeping  only  five 
out  of  the  twenty-four  hours.  But  this  second 
paper  came  to  grief  in  1865,  and  Dostoievsky 
was  forced  to  own  himself  temporarily  insolvent. 
He  had  incurred  heavy  liabilities,  not  only  to  the 
subscribers  of  the  newspaper,  but  in  addition 
a  sum  of  £\\Q0  in  bills  and  ;^700  in  debts  of 
honour.  He  writes  to  a  friend  at  this  period : 
"  I  would  gladly  go  back  to  prison  if  only  to 
pay  off  my  debts  and  to  feel  myself  free  once 
more." 

A  publishing  bookseller,  Stellovsky,  a  notorious 
rascal,  threatened  to  have  him  taken  up  for  debt. 
He  had  to  choose  between  the  debtors'  prison  and 
flight :   he  chose  the  latter,  and  escaped   abroad, 

146 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

where  he  spent  four  years  of  inexpressible  misery, 
in  the  last  extremity  of  want. 

His  Crime  and  Punishment  was  published  in 
1866,  and  this  book  brought  him  fame  and 
popularity ;  yet  in  spite  of  this,  on  an  occasion 
in  1869,  he  was  obliged  to  pawn  his  overcoat  and 
his  last  shirt  in  order  with  difficulty  to  obtain  two 
thalers. 

During  all  this  time  his  attacks  of  epilepsy 
continued.  He  was  constantly  in  trouble  with 
his  publishers,  and  bound  and  hampered  by  all 
sorts  of  contracts.  He  writes  at  this  epoch : 
"In  spite  of  all  this  I  feel  as  if  I  were  only  just 
beginning  to  live.  It  is  curious,  isn't  it  ?  I  have 
the  vitality  of  a  cat."  And  on  another  occasion 
he  talks  of  his  stubborn  and  inexhaustible  vitality. 
He  also  says  through  the  mouth  of  one  of  his 
characters,  Dimitri  Karamazov,  "  I  can  bear  any- 
thing, any  suffering,  if  I  can  only  keep  on  saying 
to  myself:  'I  live;  I  am  in  a  thousand  torments, 
but  I  live !  I  am  on  the  pillory,  but  I  exist ! 
I  see  the  sun,  or  I  do  not  see  the  sun,  but  I  know 
that  it  is  there.  And  to  know  that  there  is  a 
sun  is  enough.' " 

It  was  during  these  four  years,  overwhelmed 
by  domestic  calamity,  perpetually  harassed  by 
creditors,  attacked  by  the  authorities  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  Liberals  on  the  other,  misunder- 
stood by  his  readers,  poor,  almost  starving,  and 

147 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

never  well,  that  he  composed  his  three  great 
masterpieces:  Crime  and  Punishment  in  1866, 
The  Idiot  in  1868,  and  The  Possessed  in  1871-2  ; 
besides  planning  The  Brothers  Karamazov.  He 
had  married  a  second  time,  in  1867.  He 
returned  to  Russia  in  July  1871:  his  second 
exile  was  over.  His  popularity  had  increased, 
and  the  success  of  his  books  enabled  him  to  free 
himself  from  debt.  He  became  a  journalist  once 
more,  and  in  1873  edited  Prince  Meschtcherki's 
newspaper.  The  Grazjda7iin.  In  1876  he  started 
a  monthly  review  called  The  Diary  of  a  Writer^ 
which  sometimes  appeared  once  a  month  and 
sometimes  less  often.  The  appearance  of  the 
last  number  coincided  with  his  death.  This 
review  was  a  kind  of  encyclopaedia,  in  which 
Dostoievsky  wrote  all  his  social,  literary  and 
political  ideas,  related  any  stray  anecdotes, 
recollections  and  experiences  which  occurred  to 
him,  and  commented  on  the  political  and  literary 
topics  of  the  day.  He  never  ceased  fighting  his 
adversaries  in  this  review ;  and  during  this  time 
he  began  his  last  book.  The  Brothers  Karamazov^ 
which  was  never  finished.  In  all  his  articles  he 
preached  his  Slavophil  creed,  and  on  one  occasion 
he  made  the  whole  of  Russia  listen  to  him  and 
applaud  him  as  one  man.  This  was  on  June  8, 
1880,  when  he  made  a  speech  at  Moscow  in 
memory  of  Pushkin,  and  aroused  to  frenzy  the 
148 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

enthusiasm  even  of  those  men  whose  political 
ideals  were  the  exact  opposite  of  his  own.  He 
made  people  forget  they  were  "  Slavophils "  or 
"  Westernisers/'  and  remember  only  one  thing — 
that  they  were  Russians. 

In  the  latter  half  of  1880,  when  he  was  work- 
ing on  The  Brothers  Karamazov^  Strakhov  records  : 
"  He  was  unusually  thin  and  exhausted ;  his  body 
had  become  so  frail  that  the  first  slight  blow 
might  destroy  it.  His  mental  activity  was  un- 
tiring, although  work  had  grown  very  difficult 
for  him.  In  the  beginning  of  1881  he  fell  ill 
with  a  severe  attack  of  emphysema,  the  result 
of  catarrh  in  the  lung.  On  January  28  he  had 
haemorrhage  from  the  throat.  Feeling  the  approach 
of  death,  he  wished  to  confess  and  to  receive  the 
Blessed  Sacrament.  He  gave  the  New  Testament 
used  by  him  in  prison  to  his  wife  to  read  aloud. 
The  first  passage  chanced  to  be  Matthew  iii.  14: 
''  But  John  held  Him  back  and  said,  *  It  is  I  that 
should  be  baptized  by  Thee,  and  dost  Thou  come 
to  me  ? '  And  Jesus  answered  and  said  unto 
him,  '  Detain  Me  not ;  for  thus  it  behoves  us  to 
fulfil  a  great  truth.' " 

When  his  wife  had  read  this,  Dostoievsky  said  : 
"  You  hear  :  Do  not  detain  me.  That  means  that 
I  am  to  die."  And  he  closed  the  book.  A  few 
hours  later  he  did  actually  die,  instantaneously, 
from  the  rupture  of  an  artery  in  the  lungs. 
149 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

This  was  on  the  28th  of  January  1881  ;  on 
the  30th  he  was  buried  in  St.  Petersburg.  His 
death  and  his  funeral  had  about  them  an  almost 
mythical  greatness,  and  his  funeral  is  the  most 
striking  comment  on  the  nature  of  the  feeling 
which  the  Russian  public  had  for  him  both  as  a 
writer  and  as  a  man.  On  the  day  after  his  death, 
St.  Petersburg  witnessed  a  most  extraordinary 
sight :  the  little  house  in  which  he  had  lived 
suddenly  became  for  the  moment  the  moral 
centre  of  Russia.  Russia  understood  that  with 
the  death  of  this  struggling  and  disease-stricken 
novelist,  she  had  lost  something  inestimably 
precious,  rare  and  irreplaceable.  Spontaneously, 
and  without  any  organised  preparation,  the  most 
imposing  and  triumphant  funeral  ceremony  was 
given  to  Dostoievsky's  remains ;  and  this  funeral 
was  not  only  the  greatest  and  most  inspiring 
which  had  ever  taken  place  in  Russia,  but  as 
far  as  its  inward  significance  was  concerned 
there  can  hardly  ever  have  been  a  greater  one 
in  the  world.  Other  great  writers  and  other 
great  men  have  been  buried  with  more  gorgeous 
pomp  and  with  a  braver  show  of  outward  dis- 
play, but  never,  when  such  a  man  has  been 
followed  to  the  grave  by  a  mourning  multitude, 
have  the  trophies  and  tributes  of  grief  been  so 
real ;  for  striking  as  they  were  by  their  quantity 
and  their  nature,  they  seemed  but  a  feeble  and 

150 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

slender  evidence  of  the   sorrow  and  the  love  to 
which  they  bore  witness.      There  were  deputations 
bearing  countless    wreaths,  there  were  numerous 
choirs      singing     religious     chants,     there     were 
thousands  of  people  following  in   a  slow  stream 
along    the    streets  of  St.   Petersburg,  there  were 
men   and  women  of  every  class,  but  mostly  poor 
people,  shabbily  dressed,  of  the  lower  middle  or 
the  lower  classes.      The   dream    of    Dostoievsky, 
that  the  whole  of  Russia  should  be  united  by  a 
bond  of  fraternity  and  brotherly  love,  seemed  to 
be  realised  when  this  crowd  of  men,  composed  of 
such  various  and  widely  differing  elements,  met 
together  in    common    grief  by   his    grave.      Dos- 
toievsky had  lived  the  life  of  a  pauper,  and   of  a 
man  who  had  to  fight  with   all   his  strength   in 
order  to  win  his   daily  bread.      He  had  been  as- 
sailed by  disease  and  hunted  by  misfortune ;  his 
whole  life  seemed  to  have  rushed  by  before  he 
had  had  time  to  sit  down  quietly  and  write  the 
great    ideas    which   were    seething    in    his    mind. 
Everything  he  had  written   seemed  to  have  been 
written    by    chance,   haphazardly,    to    have    been 
jotted     down    against    time,    between    wind    and 
water.      But  in  spite  of  this,  in  his  work,  however 
incomplete,     however     fragmentary    and     full    of 
faults  it  may  have  been,  there  was  a  voice  speak- 
ing, a  particular  message  being  delivered,  which 
was  different  from  that  of  other  writers,  and  at 

151 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

times  more  precious.  While  it  was  there,  the 
public  took  it  for  granted,  like  the  sun ;  and  it 
was  only  when  Dostoievsky  died  that  the  huge- 
ness of  the  gap  made  by  his  death,  caused  them 
to  feel  how  great  was  the  place  he  had  occupied 
both  in  their  hearts  and  in  their  minds.  It 
was  only  when  he  died  that  they  recognised 
how  great  a  man  he  was,  and  how  warmly  they 
admired  and  loved  him.  Everybody  felt  this 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest.  Tolstoy,  in 
writing  of  Dostoievsky's  death,  says :  "  I  never 
saw  the  man,  and  never  had  any  direct  relations 
with  him,  yet  suddenly  when  he  died  I  under- 
stood that  he  was  the  nearest  and  dearest  and 
most  necessary  of  men  to  me.  Everything  that 
he  did  was  of  the  kind  that  the  more  he  did  of  it 
the  better  I  felt  it  was  for  men.  And  all  at  once 
I  read  that  he  is  dead,  and  a  prop  has  fallen 
from  me."  This  is  what  the  whole  of  Russia 
felt,  that  a  support  had  fallen  from  them  ;  and 
this  is  what  they  expressed  when  they  gave  to 
Dostoievsky  a  funeral  such  as  no  king  nor 
Captain  has  ever  had,  a  funeral  whose  very 
shabbiness  was  greater  than  any  splendour,  and 
whose  trophies  and  emblems  were  the  grief  of  a 
nation  and  the  tears  of  thousands  of  hearts 
united  together  in  the  admiration  and  love  of 
a  man  whom  each  one  of  them  regarded  as  his 
brother. 

152 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

III 

Dostoievsky's  Character 

Such,  briefly,  are  the  main  facts  of  Dostoievsky's 
crowded  life.  Unlike  Tolstoy,  who  has  himself 
told  us  in  every  conceivable  way  everything  down 
to  the  most  intimate  detail  which  is  to  be  known 
about  himself,  Dostoievsky  told  us  little  of 
himself,  and  all  that  we  know  about  him  is 
gathered  from  other  people  or  from  his  letters  ; 
and  even  now  we  know  comparatively  little 
about  his  life.  He  disliked  talking  about  him- 
self; he  could  not  bear  to  be  pitied.  He  was 
modest,  and  shielded  his  feelings  with  a  lofty 
shame.      Strakhov  writes  about  him  thus : 

•'  In  Dostoievsky  you  could  never  detect  the 
slightest  bitterness  or  hardness  resulting  from  the 
sufferings  he  had  undergone,  and  there  was  never 
in  him  a  hint  of  posing  as  a  martyr.  He  behaved 
as  if  there  had  been  nothing  extraordinary  in  his 
past.  He  never  represented  himself  as  disillu- 
sioned, or  as  not  having  an  equable  mind  ;  but, 
on  the  contrary,  he  appeared  cheerful  and  alert, 
when  his  health  allowed  him  to  do  so.  I 
remember  that  a  lady  coming  for  the  first  time 
to  Michael  Dostoievsky's  (his  brother's)  evenings 
at  the  newspaper  office,  looked  long  at  Dostoievsky, 
and  finally  said  :  '  As  I  look  at  you  it  seems  to 
153 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

me  that  I  see  in  your  face  the  sufferings  which 
you  have  endured.'  These  words  visibly  annoyed 
Dostoievsky.  '  What  sufferings  ? '  he  said,  and 
began  to  joke  on  indifferent  matters." 

Long  after  his  imprisonment  and  exile,  when 
some  friends  of  his  tried  to  prove  to  him  that 
his  exile  had  been  a  brutal  act  of  injustice,  he 
said  :  "  The  Socialists  are  the  result  of  the  fol- 
lowers of  Petrachevsky.  Petrachevsky's  disciples 
sowed  many  seeds."  And  when  he  was  asked 
whether  such  men  deserved  to  be  exiled,  he 
answered  :  "  Our  exile  was  just ;  the  people  would 
have  condemned  us." 

The  main  characteristics  of  his  nature  were 
generosity,  catholicity,  vehement  passion,  and  a 
*'  sweet  reasonableness."  Once  when  he  was 
living  with  Riesenkampf,  a  German  doctor,  he 
was  found  living  on  bread  and  milk ;  and  even 
for  that  he  was  in  debt  at  a  little  milk  shop. 
This  same  doctor  says  that  Dostoievsky  was 
"  one  of  those  men  to  live  with  whom  is  good  for 
every  one,  but  who  are  themselves  in  perpetual 
want."  He  was  mercilessly  robbed,  but  he  would 
never  blame  any  one  who  took  advantage  of  his 
kindness  and  his  trustfulness.  One  of  his  bio- 
graphers tells  us  that  his  life  with  Riesenkampf 
proved  expensive  to  him,  because  no  poor  man 
who  came  to  see  the  doctor  went  away  without 
having  received  something  from  Dostoievsky. 
154 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

One  cannot  read  a  page  of  his  books  without 
being  aware  of  the  "  sweet  reasonableness "  of 
his  nature.  This  pervaded  his  writings  with 
fragrance  like  some  precious  balm,  and  is  made 
manifest  to  us  in  the  touching  simplicity  of  some 
of  his  characters,  such  as  the  Idiot  and  Alexis 
Karamazov,  to  read  of  whom  is  like  being  with 
some  warm  and  comforting  influence,  something 
sweet  and  sensible  and  infinitely  human.  His 
catholicity  consists  in  an  almost  boundless 
power  of  appreciation,  an  appreciation  of  things, 
persons  and  books  widely  removed  from  himself 
by  accidents  of  time,  space,  class,  nationality 
and  character.  Dostoievsky  is  equally  able  to 
appreciate  the  very  essence  of  a  performance 
got  up  by  convicts  in  his  prison,  and  the  inner- 
most beauty  of  the  plays  of  Racine.  This  last 
point  is  singular  and  remarkable.  He  was 
universal  and  cosmopolitan  in  his  admiration  of 
the  literature  of  foreign  countries ;  and  he  was 
cosmopolitan,  not  because  he  wished  to  cut  himself 
away  from  Russian  traditions  and  to  become 
European  and  Westernised,  but  because  he  was 
profoundly  Russian,  and  had  the  peculiarly 
Russian  plastic  and  receptive  power  of  under- 
standing and  assimilating  things  widely  different 
from  himself. 

When  he  was  a  young  man,  Shakespeare  and 
Schiller  were  well  known,  and  it  was  the  fashion 
155 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

to  admire  them.  It  was  equally  the  fashion  to 
despise  the  French  writers  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  But  Dostoievsky  was  just  as  enthusi- 
astic in  his  admiration  of  Racine  and  Corneille 
and  all  the  great  classics  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. Thus  he  writes :  "  But  Phedre,  brother ! 
You  will  be  the  Lord  knows  what  if  you  say  this 
is  not  the  highest  and  purest  nature  and  poetry ; 
the  outline  of  it  is  Shakespearian,  but  the  statue 
is  in  plaster,  not  in  marble."  And  again  of 
Corneille:  "Have  you  read  The  Cid}  Read  it, 
you  wretch,  read  it,  and  go  down  in  the  dust 
before  Corneille !  " 

Dostoievsky  was  constantly  "  going  down  in 
the  dust "  before  the  great  masterpieces,  not 
only  of  his  own,  but  of  other  countries,  which 
bears  out  the  saying  that  "  La  valeur  morale 
de  I'homme  est  en  proportion  de  sa  faculty 
d'admirer." 

Dostoievsky  never  theorised  as  to  how  alms 
should  be  given,  or  as  to  how  charity  should  be 
organised.  He  gave  what  he  had,  simply  and 
naturally,  to  those  who  he  saw  had  need  of  it ; 
and  he  had  a  right  to  this  knowledge,  for  he  him- 
self had  received  alms  in  prison.  Neither  did  he 
ever  theorise  as  to  whether  a  man  should  leave 
the  work  which  he  was  fitted  by  Providence  to 
do  (such  as  writing  books),  in  order  to  plough 
fields  and    to    cut   down    trees.      He    had    prac- 

156 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

tised  hard  labour,  not  as  a  theoretic  amateur,  but 
as  a  constrained  professional.  He  had  carried 
heavy  loads  of  bricks  and  broken  up  ships  and 
swept  up  heaps  of  snow,  not  out  of  philosophy  or 
theory,  but  because  he  had  been  obliged  to  do  so ; 
because  if  he  had  not  done  so  he  would  have  been 
severely  punished.  All  that  Tolstoy  dreamed  of 
and  aimed  at,  which  was  serious  in  theory  but  not 
serious  in  practice,  that  is  to  say,  giving  up  his 
property,  becoming  one  with  the  people,  ploughing 
the  fields,  was  a  reality  to  Dostoievsky  when 
he  was  in  prison.  He  knew  that  hard  labour  is 
only  real  when  it  is  a  necessity,  when  you  cannot 
leave  off  doing  it  when  you  want  to ;  he  had 
experienced  this  kind  of  hard  labour  for  four 
years,  and  during  his  whole  life  he  had  to  work 
for  his  daily  bread.  The  result  of  this  is  that 
he  made  no  theories  about  what  work  a  man 
should  do,  but  simply  did  as  well  as  he  could 
the  work  he  had  to  do.  In  the  words  of  a 
ballade  written  by  Mr.  Chesterton,  he  might 
have  said : 

"We  eat  the  cheese, — you  scraped  about  the  rind, 
You  lopped  the  tree — we  eat  the  fruit  instead. 
You  were  benevolent,  but  we  were  kind, 
You  know  the  laws  of  food,  but  we  were  fed." 

And  this  is  the  great  difference  between  Dostoiev- 
sky and  Tolstoy.      Tolstoy  was    benevolent,  but 
Dostoievsky  was  kind.      Tolstoy  theorised  on  the 
157 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

distribution  of  food,  but  Dostoievsky  was  fed  and 
received  alms  like  a  beggar.  Dostoievsky,  so 
far  from  despising  the  calling  of  an  author,  or 
thinking  that  it  was  an  occupation  "  thin  sown 
with  aught  of  profit  or  delight"  for  the  human 
race,  loved  literature  passionately.  He  was  proud 
of  his  profession  :  he  was  a  great  man  of  letters 
as  well  as  a  great  author.  "  I  have  never  sold," 
he  wrote,  "  one  of  my  books  without  getting  the 
price  down  beforehand.  I  am  a  literary  pro- 
letarian. If  anybody  wants  my  work  he  must 
ensure  me  by  prepayment." 

There  is  something  which  resembles  Dr.  John- 
son in  the  way  he  talks  of  his  profession  and  his 
attitude  towards  it.  But  there  is,  nevertheless,  in 
the  phrase  just  quoted,  something  bitterly  ironical 
when  one  reflects  that  he  was  a  poor  man  all  his 
life  and  incessantly  harassed  by  creditors,  and 
that  he  derived  almost  nothing  from  the  great 
popularity  and  sale  of  his  books. 

"  Dostoievsky,"  writes  Strakov,  "  loved  litera- 
ture;  he  took  her  as  she  was,  with  all  her 
conditions ;  he  never  stood  apart  from  literature, 
and  he  never  looked  down  upon  her.  This  absence 
of  the  least  hint  of  literary  snobbishness  is  in  him 
a  beautiful  and  touching  characteristic.  Russian 
literature  was  the  one  lodestar  of  Dostoievsky's 
life,  and  he  cherished  for  it  a  passionate  love  and 
devotion.  He  knew  very  well  that  when  he 
IS8 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

entered  the  lists  he  would  have  to  go  into  the 
public  market-place,  and  he  was  never  ashamed 
of  his  trade  nor  of  his  fellow-workers.  On  the 
contrary,  he  was  proud  of  his  profession,  and 
considered  it  a  great  and  sacred  one." 

He  speaks  of  himself  as  a  literary  hack  :  he 
writes  at  so  much  a  line,  three  and  a  half  printed 
pages  of  a  newspaper  in  two  days  and  two  nights. 
"  Often,"  he  says,  "  it  happened  in  my  literary 
career  that  the  beginning  of  the  chapter  of  a 
novel  or  story  was  already  set  up,  and  the  end 
was  still  in  my  mind  and  had  to  be  written  by 
the  next  day."  Again :  "  Work  from  want 
and  for  money  has  crushed  and  devoured  me. 
Will  my  poverty  ever  cease  ?  Ah,  if  I  had 
money,  then   I   should  be  free ! " 

I  have  said  that  one  of  the  main  elements  of 
Dostoievsky's  character  was  vehement  passion. 
There  was  more  than  a  vehement  element  of 
passion  in  Dostoievsky  ;  he  was  not  only  passion- 
ate in  his  loves  and  passionate  in  his  hates,  but 
his  passion  was  unbridled.  In  this  he  resembles 
the  people  of  the  Renaissance.  There  were 
perilous  depths  in  his  personality ;  black  pools  of 
passion ;  a  seething  whirlpool  that  sent  up  every 
now  and  then  great  eddies  of  boiling  surge ;  yet 
this  passion  has  nothing  about  it  which  is  unde- 
finably  evil ;  it  never  smells  of  the  pit.  The 
reason  of  this  is  that  although  Dostoievsky's 
159 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

soul  descended  into  hell,  it  was  purged  by  the 
flames,  and  no  poisonous  fumes  ever  came  from  it. 
There  was  something  of  St.  Francis  in  him,  and 
something  of  Velasquez.  Dostoievsky  was  a 
violent  hater.  I  have  already  told  how  he  hated 
Bielinsky,  the  Socialists  and  the  materialists  whom 
he  attacked  all  his  life,  but  against  Tourgeniev 
he  nourished  a  blind  and  causeless  hatred.  This 
manifests  itself  as  soon  as  he  leaves  prison,  in 
the  following  outburst :  "  I  know  very  well,"  he 
writes,  "  that  I  write  worse  than  Tourgeniev,  but 
not  so  very  much  worse,  and  after  all  I  hope  one 
day  to  write  quite  as  well  as  he  does.  Why,  with 
my  crying  wants,  do  I  receive  only  lOO  roubles  a 
sheet,  and  Tourgeniev,  who  possesses  two  thousand 
serfs,  receives  400  roubles  ?  Owing  to  my  poverty 
I  am  obliged  to  hurry,  to  write  for  money,  and 
consequently  to  spoil  my  work."  In  a  postscript 
he  says  that  he  sends  Katkov,  the  great  Moscow 
editor,  fifteen  sheets  at  100  roubles  a  sheet,  that 
is,  1500  roubles  in  all.  "  I  have  had  500  roubles 
from  him,  and  besides,  when  I  had  sent  three- 
quarters  of  the  novel,  I  asked  him  for  200  to  help 
me  along,  or  700  altogether.  I  shall  reach  Tver 
without  a  farthing.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I 
shall  shortly  receive  from  Katkov  seven  or  eight 
hundred  roubles." 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  whole  nature 
of  Dostoievsky,  both  as  man  and  artist,  was  pro- 

160 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

foundly  modified  by  the  disease  from  which  he 
suffered  all  his  life,  his  epilepsy.  He  had  there- 
fore two  handicaps  against  him :  disease  and 
poverty.  But  it  is  his  epilepsy  which  was  prob- 
ably the  cause  of  his  dislikes,  his  hatreds  and 
his  outbreaks  of  violent  passion.  The  attacks 
of  epilepsy  came  upon  him  about  once  a  month, 
and  sometimes,  though  not  often,  they  were  more 
frequent.  He  once  had  two  in  a  week.  His 
friend  Strakov  describes  one  of  them  thus :  "  I 
once  saw  one  of  his  ordinary  attacks :  it  was,  I 
fancy,  in  1863,  just  before  Easter.  Late  in  the 
evening,  about  eleven  o'clock,  he  came  to  see  me, 
and  we  had  a  very  animated  conversation.  I 
cannot  remember  the  subject,  but  I  know  that  it 
was  important  and  abstruse.  He  became  excited, 
and  walked  about  the  room  while  I  sat  at  the 
table.  He  said  something  fine  and  jubilant. 
I  confirmed  his  opinion  by  some  remark,  and 
he  turned  to  me  a  face  which  positively  glowed 
with  the  most  transcendent  inspiration.  He 
paused  for  a  moment,  as  if  searching  for  words, 
and  had  already  opened  his  lips  to  speak.  I 
looked  at  him  all  expectant  for  fresh  revelation. 
Suddenly  from  his  open  mouth  issued  a  strange, 
prolonged,  and  inarticulate  moan.  He  sank 
senseless  on  the  floor  in  the  middle  of  the 
room." 

The  ancients  called   this  "  the  sacred  sickness." 
L  i6i 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Just  before  the  attacks,  Dostoievsky  felt  a  kind  of 
rapture,  something  like  what  people  say  they  feel 
when  they  hear  very  great  music,  a  perfect  har- 
mony between  himself  and  the  world,  a  sensation 
as  if  he  had  reached  the  edge  of  a  planet,  and 
were  falling  off  it  into  infinite  space.  And  this 
feeling  was  such  that  for  some  seconds  of  the 
rapture,  he  said,  you  might  give  ten  years  of 
your  life,  or  even  the  whole  of  it.  But  after  the 
attack  his  condition  was  dreadful,  and  he  could 
hardly  sustain  the  state  of  low-spirited  dreariness 
and  sensitiveness  into  which  he  was  plunged. 
He  felt  like  a  criminal,  and  fancied  there 
hung  over  him  an  invisible  guilt,  a  great  trans- 
gression. He  compares  both  sensations,  suddenly 
combined  and  blended  in  a  flash,  to  the  famous 
falling  pitcher  of  Mahomet,  which  had  not  time 
to  empty  itself  while  the  Prophet  on  Allah's 
steed  was  girdling  heaven  and  hell.  It  is  no 
doubt  the  presence  of  this  disease  and  the  fre- 
quency of  the  attacks,  which  were  responsible 
for  the  want  of  balance  in  his  nature  and  in  his 
artistic  conceptions,  just  as  his  grinding  poverty 
and  the  merciless  conditions  of  his  existence  are 
responsible  for  the  want  of  finish  in  his  style. 
But  Dostoievsky  had  the  qualities  of  his  defects, 
and  it  is  perhaps  owing  to  his  very  illness,  and  to 
its  extraordinary  nature,  that  he  was  able  so 
deeply  to  penetrate  into  the  human  soul.      It  is 

162 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

as  if  the  veil  of  flesh  and  blood  dividing  the  soul 
from  that  which  is  behind  all  things,  was  finer 
and  more  transparent  in  Dostoievsky  than  in 
other  men :  by  his  very  illness  he  may  have 
been  able  to  discern  what  is  invisible  to  others. 
It  is  certainly  owing  to  the  combined  poverty 
and  disease  which  made  up  his  life,  that  he 
had  such  an  unexampled  insight  into  the  lives 
and  hearts  of  the  humble,  the  rejected,  the 
despised,  the  afflicted,  and  the  oppressed.  He 
sounded  the  utmost  depths  of  human  misery,  he 
lived  face  to  face  with  the  lowest  representatives 
of  human  misfortune  and  disgrace,  and  he  was 
neither  dispirited  nor  dismayed.  He  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  was  all  for  the  best,  and  like 
Job  in  dust  and  ashes  consented  to  the  eternal 
scheme.  And  though  all  his  life  he  was  one  of 
the  conquered,  he  never  ceased  fighting,  and 
never  for  one  moment  believed  that  life  was  not 
worth  living.  On  the  contrary,  he  blessed  life  and 
made  others  bless  it. 

His  life  was  "  a  long  disease,"  rendered  harder 
to  bear  and  more  difficult  by  exceptionally  cruel 
circumstances.  In  spite  of  this,  Dostoievsky  was 
a  happy  man  :  he  was  happy  and  he  was  cheerful ; 
and  he  was  happy  not  because  he  was  a  saint,  but 
because,  in  spite  of  all  his  faults,  he  radiated 
goodness ;  because  his  immense  heart  overflowed 
in  kindness,  and  having  suffered  much  himself,  he 
163 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

understood  the  sufferings  of  others ;  thus  although 
his  books  are  terrible,  and  deal  with  the  darkest 
clouds  which  can  overshadow  the  human  spirit, 
the  descent  into  hell  of  the  human  soul,  yet  the 
main  impression  left  by  them  is  not  one  of  gloom 
but  one  of  comfort.  Dostoievsky  is,  above  all 
things,  a  healer  and  a  comforter,  and  this  is 
because  the  whole  of  his  teaching,  his  morality, 
his  art,  his  character,  are  based  on  the  simple 
foundation  of  what  the  Russians  call  "  dolgoterp- 
jenie,"  that  is,  forbearance,  and  "  smirenie,"  that 
is  to  say,  resignation.  In  the  whole  history  of  the 
world's  literature  there  is  no  literary  man's  life 
which  was  so  arduous  and  so  hard;  but  Dostoievsky 
never  complained,  nor,  we  can  be  sure,  would  he 
have  wished  his  life  to  have  been  otherwise.  His 
life  was  a  martyrdom,  but  he  enjoyed  it.  Although 
no  one  more  nearly  than  he  bears  witness  to 
Heine's  saying  that  "  where  a  great  spirit  is,  there 
is  Golgotha,"  yet  we  can  say  without  hesitation 
that  Dostoievsky  was  a  happy  man,  and  he  was 
happy  because  he  never  thought  about  himself,  and 
because,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  he  relieved 
and  comforted  the  sufferings  of  others.  And  his 
books  continued  to  do  so  long  after  he  ceased  to 
live. 

All  this  can  be  summed  up  in  one  word :  the 
value  of  Dostoievsky's  life.  And  the  whole  reason 
that    his    books,    although    they    deal    with    the 

164 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

tragedies  of  mankind,  bring  comfort  to  the  reader 
instead  of  gloom,  hope  instead  of  despair,  is,  firstly, 
that  Dostoievsky  was  an  altruist,  and  that  he 
fulfilled  the  most  difficult  precept  of  Christianity — 
to  love  others  better  than  oneself;  and,  secondly, 
that  in  leading  us  down  in  the  lowest  depths  of 
tragedy,  he  shows  us  that  where  man  ends,  God 
takes  up  the  tale. 

IV 

Poor  Folk  and  the  Letters  from  a 
Dead  House 

In  his  first  book.  Poor  Folk,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  I  846,  we  have  the  germ  of  all  Dostoievsky's 
talent  and  genius.  It  is  true  that  he  accomplished 
far  greater  things,  but  never  anything  more 
characteristic.  It  is  the  story  of  a  poor  official, 
a  minor  clerk  in  a  Government  office,  already 
aged  and  worn  with  cares,  who  battles  against 
material  want.  In  his  sombre  and  monotonous 
life  there  is  a  ray  of  light :  in  another  house  as 
poor  and  as  squalid  as  his  own,  there  lives  a  girl, 
a  distant  relation  of  his,  who  is  also  in  hard  and 
humble  circumstances,  and  who  has  nothing  in 
the  world  save  the  affection  and  friendship  of  this 
poor  clerk.  They  write  to  each  other  daily.  In 
the  man's  letters  a  discreet  unselfishness  is  revealed, 
a  rare  delicacy  of  feeling,  which  is  in  sharp  contrast 

165 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

to  the  awkwardness  of  his  everyday  actions  and 
ideas,  which  verge  on  the  grotesque.  At  the 
office,  he  has  to  cringe  and  sacrifice  his  honour  in 
order  not  to  forfeit  the  favour  of  his  superiors. 
He  stints  himself,  and  makes  every  kind  of  small 
sacrifice,  in  order  that  this  woman  may  be  relieved 
of  her  privations.  He  writes  to  her  like  a  father 
or  brother ;  but  it  is  easy  for  us  to  see  in  his 
simple  phrases  that  he  is  in  love  with  her,  although 
she  does  not  realise  it.  The  character  of  the 
woman  is  equally  clear  to  us :  she  is  superior  to 
him  in  education  and  mind,  and  she  is  less 
resigned  to  her  fate  than  he  is.  In  the  course  of 
their  correspondence  we  learn  all  that  is  to  be 
known  about  their  past,  their  melancholy  history 
and  the  small  incidents  of  their  everyday  life,  the 
struggle  that  is  continually  working  in  the  mind 
of  the  clerk  between  his  material  want  and  his 
desire  not  to  lose  his  personal  honour.  This 
correspondence  continues  day  by  day  until  the 
crisis  comes,  and  the  clerk  loses  the  one  joy  of 
his  life,  and  learns  that  his  friend  is  engaged 
to  be  married.  But  she  has  not  been  caught 
up  or  carried  off  in  a  brilliant  adventure :  she 
marries  a  middle-aged  man,  very  rich  and  slightly 
discredited,  and  all  her  last  letters  are  full  of 
commissions  which  she  trusts  to  her  devoted  old 
friend  to  accomplish.  He  is  sent  to  the  dress- 
makers about  her  gowns,  and  to  the  jeweller  about 
i66 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

her  rings ;  and  all  this  he  accepts  and  does  with 
perfect  self-sacrifice ;  and  his  sacrifice  seems  quite 
accidental,  a  matter  of  course :  there  is  not  the 
slightest  pose  in  it,  nor  any  fuss,  and  only  at  the 
end,  in  his  very  last  letter,  and  even  then  only  in 
a  veiled  and  discreet  form,  does  he  express  any- 
thing of  the  immense  sorrow  which  the  blow  is 
bringing  to  him. 

The  woman's  character  is  as  subtly  drawn  as 
the  man's ;  she  is  more  independent  than  he,  and 
less  resigned  ;  she  is  kind  and  good,  and  it  is  from 
no  selfish  motives  that  she  grasps  at  the  improve- 
ment in  her  fortunes.  But  she  is  still  young,  and 
her  youth  rises  within  her  and  imperatively  claims 
its  natural  desires.  She  is  convinced  that  by  ac- 
cepting the  proposal  which  is  made  to  her  she  will 
alleviate  her  friend's  position  as  much  as  her  own  ; 
moreover,  she  regards  him  as  a  faithful  friend,  and 
nothing  more.  But  we,  the  outsiders  who  read  his 
letters,  see  clearly  that  what  he  feels  for  her  is  more 
than  friendship  :  it  is  simply  love  and  nothing  else. 

The  second  important  book  which  Dostoievsky 
wrote  (for  the  stories  he  published  immediately 
after  Poor  Folk  were  not  up  to  his  mark)  was  the 
Letters  from  a  Dead  House,  which  was  published 
on  his  return  to  Russia  in  1861.  This  book  may 
not  be  his  finest  artistic  achievement,  but  it  is 
certainly  the  most  humanly  interesting  book 
which  he  ever  wrote,  and  one  of  the  most  interest- 
167 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

ing  books  which  exist  in  the  whole  of  the  world's 
literature.  In  this  book  he  told  his  prison 
experiences:  they  were  put  forward  in  the  shape 
of  the  posthumous  records  of  a  nobleman  who 
had  committed  murder  out  of  jealousy,  and  was 
condemned  to  spend  some  years  in  the  convict 
prison.  The  book  is  supposed  to  be  the  papers 
which  this  nobleman  left  behind  him.  They 
cover  a  period  of  four  years,  which  was  the  term 
of  Dostoievsky's  sentence.  The  most  remark- 
able characteristic  of  the  book  is  the  entire 
absence  of  egotism  in  the  author.  Many  authors 
in  similar  circumstances  would  have  written 
volumes  of  self-analysis,  and  filled  pages  with  their 
lamentations  and  in  diagnosing  their  sensations. 
Very  few  men  in  such  a  situation  could  have 
avoided  a  slight  pose  of  martyrdom.  In 
Dostoievsky  there  is  nothing  of  this.  He  faces 
the  horror  of  the  situation,  but  he  has  no 
grievance ;  and  the  book  is  all  about  other  people 
and  as  little  as  possible  about  himself.  And  herein 
lies  its  priceless  value,  for  there  is  no  other  book 
either  of  fiction  or  travel  which  throws  such  a 
searching  light  on  the  character  of  the  Russian 
people,  and  especially  on  that  of  the  Russian 
peasants.  Dostoievsky  got  nearer  to  the  Russian 
peasant  than  any  one  has  ever  done,  and  neces- 
sarily so,  because  he  lived  with  them  on  equal  terms 
as  a  convict.  But  this  alone  would  not  suffice 
i68 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

to  produce  so  valuable  a  book  ;  something  else 
was  necessary,  and  the  second  indispensable 
factor  was  supplied  by  Dostoievsky's  peculiar 
nature,  his  simplicity  of  mind,  his  kindness  of 
heart,  his  sympathy  and  understanding.  In  the 
very  first  pages  of  this  book  we  are  led  into  the 
heart  of  a  convict's  life :  the  milieu  rises  before  us 
in  startling  vividness.  The  first  thing  which 
we  are  made  aware  of  is  that  this  prison  life 
has  a  peculiar  character  of  its  own.  The 
strange  family  or  colony  which  was  gathered 
together  in  this  Siberian  prison  consisted  of 
criminals  of  every  grade  and  description,  and  in 
which  not  only  every  class  of  Russian  society,  but 
every  shade  and  variety  of  the  Russian  people 
was  represented ;  that  is  to  say,  there  were  here 
assassins  by  profession,  and  men  who  had  become 
assassins  by  chance,  robbers,  brigands,  tramps, 
pick-pockets,  smugglers,  peasants,  Armenians, 
Jews,  Poles,  Mussulmans,  soldiers  who  were  there 
for  insubordination  and  even  for  murder ;  officers, 
gentlemen,  and  political  prisoners,  and  men  who 
were  there  no  one  knew  why. 

Now  Dostoievsky  points  out  that  at  a  first 
glance  you  could  detect  one  common  character- 
istic in  this  strange  family.  Even  the  most 
sharply  defined,  the  most  eccentric  and  original 
personalities,  who  stood  out  and  towered 
above  their  comrades,  even  these  did  their 
169 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

best  to  adopt  the  manners  and  customs,  the 
unwritten  code,  the  etiquette  of  the  prison.  In 
general,  he  continues,  these  people  with  a  very 
few  exceptions  (innately  cheerful  people  who  met 
with  universal  contempt)  were  surly,  envious, 
extraordinarily  vain,  boastful,  touchy,  and  in  the 
highest  degree  punctilious  and  conventional.  To 
be  astonished  at  nothing  was  considered  the 
highest  quality ;  and  in  all  of  them  the  one  aim 
and  obsession  was  outward  demeanour  and  the 
wish  to  keep  up  appearances.  There  were  men 
who  pretended  to  have  either  great  moral  or 
great  physical  strength  and  boasted  of  it,  who 
were  in  reality  cowards  at  heart,  and  whose 
cowardice  was  revealed  in  a  flash.  There  were 
also  men  who  possessed  really  strong  characters ; 
but  the  curious  thing  was,  Dostoievsky  tells  us, 
that  these  really  strong  characters  were  abnor- 
mally vain.  The  main  and  universal  character- 
istic of  the  criminal  was  his  vanity,  his  desire,  as 
the  Italians  say,  to  fare  figura  at  all  costs.  I 
have  been  told  that  this  is  true  of  English  prisons, 
where  prisoners  will  exercise  the  most  extra- 
ordinary ingenuity  in  order  to  shave.  The 
greater  part  of  these  people  were  radically  vicious, 
and  frightfully  quarrelsome.  The  gossip,  the 
backbiting,  the  tale-bearing,  and  the  repeating  of 
small  calumnies  were  incessant ;  yet  in  spite  of 
this  not  one  man  dared  to  stand  up  against  the 
170 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

public  opinion  of  the  prison,  according  to  whose 
etiquette  and  unwritten  law  a  particular  kind  of 
demeanour  was  observed.  In  other  words,  these 
prisoners  were  exactly  like  private  schoolboys 
or  public  schoolboys.  At  a  public  school,  boys 
will  create  a  certain  etiquette,  which  has  its  un- 
written law ;  for  instance,  let  us  take  Eton.  At 
Eton  you  may  walk  on  one  side  of  the  street  but 
not  on  the  other,  unless  you  are  a  person  of 
sufficient  importance.  When  you  wear  a  great- 
coat, you  must  always  turn  the  collar  up,  unless 
you  are  a  person  of  a  particular  importance. 
You  must  likewise  never  go  about  with  an 
umbrella  unrolled  ;  and,  far  more  important  than 
all  these  questions,  there  arrives  a  psychological 
moment  in  the  career  of  an  Eton  boy  when,  of 
his  own  accord,  he  wears  a  stick-up  collar  instead 
of  a  turned-down  collar,  by  which  act  he  proclaims 
to  the  world  that  he  is  a  person  of  considerable 
importance.  These  rules  are  unwritten  and 
undefined.  Nobody  tells  another  boy  not  to 
walk  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  road  ;  no  boy  will 
ever  dream  of  turning  down  his  collar,  if  he  is  not 
important  enough ;  and  in  the  third  and  more 
special  case,  the  boy  who  suddenly  puts  on  a 
stick-up  collar  must  feel  himself  by  instinct  when 
that  psychological  moment  has  arrived.  It  is  not 
done  for  any  definite  reason,  it  is  merely  the  ex- 
pression of  a  kind  of  atmosphere.  He  knows  at 
171 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

a  given  moment  that  he  can  or  cannot  go  into 
stick-ups.  Some  boys  can  go  into  stick-ups  for 
almost  nothing,  if  they  have  in  their  personality 
the  necessary  amount  of  imponderable  prestige  ; 
others,  though  the  possessors  of  many  trophies  and 
colours,  can  only  do  so  at  the  last  possible  minute. 
But  all  must  have  some  definite  reason  for  going 
into  stick-ups  :  no  boy  can  go  into  stick-ups  merely 
because  he  is  clever  and  thinks  a  lot  of  himself, — 
that  would  not  only  be  impossible,  but  unthinkable. 
Dostoievsky's  account  of  the  convicts  reminds 
me  so  strongly  of  the  conduct  of  private  and 
public  schoolboys  in  England,  that,  with  a  few 
slight  changes,  his  Letters  from  a  Dead  House 
might  be  about  an  English  school,  as  far  as 
the  mere  etiquette  of  the  convicts  is  con- 
cerned. Here,  for  instance,  is  a  case  in  point : 
Dostoievsky  says  that  there  lived  in  this  prison 
men  of  dynamic  personalities,  who  feared  neither 
God  nor  man,  and  had  never  obeyed  any 
one  in  their  lives ;  and  yet  they  at  once  fell 
in  with  the  standard  of  behaviour  expected  of 
them.  There  came  to  the  prison  men  who 
had  been  the  terror  of  their  village  and  their 
neighbourhood.  Such  a  "  new  boy "  looked 
round,  and  at  once  understood  that  he  had 
arrived  at  a  place  where  he  could  astonish  no 
one,  and  that  the  only  thing  to  do  was  to  be 
quiet  and  fall  in  with  the  manners  of  the  place, 
172 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

and  into  what  Dostoievsky  calls  the  universal 
etiquette,  which  he  defines  as  follows :  "  This 
etiquette,"  he  says,  "  consisted  outwardly  of  a  kind 
of  peculiar  dignity  with  which  every  inhabitant  of 
the  prison  was  impregnated,  as  if  the  fact  of  being 
a  convict  was,  ipso  facto^  a  kind  of  rank,  and  a 
respectable  rank."  This  is  exactly  the  point  of 
view  of  a  schoolboy  at  a  private  school.  A  school- 
boy prefers  to  be  at  home  rather  than  at  school. 
He  knows  that  he  is  obliged  to  be  at  school,  he  is 
obliged  to  work  against  his  will,  and  to  do  things 
which  are  often  disagreeable  to  him  ;  at  the  same 
time  his  entire  efforts  are  strained  to  one  object, 
towards  preserving  the  dignity  of  his  status. 
That  was  the  great  ambition  of  the  convicts,  to 
preserve  the  dignity  of  the  status  of  a  convict. 
Throughout  this  book  one  receives  the  impression 
that  the  convicts  behaved  in  many  ways  like 
schoolboys ;  in  fact,  in  one  place  Dostoievsky 
says  that  in  many  respects  they  were  exactly  like 
children.  He  quotes,  for  instance,  their  delight 
in  spending  the  little  money  they  could  get  hold 
of  on  a  smart  linen  shirt  and  a  belt,  and  walking 
round  the  whole  prison  to  show  it  off.  They 
did  not  keep  such  finery  long,  and  nearly  always 
ended  by  selling  it  for  almost  nothing ;  but  their 
delight  while  they  possessed  it  was  intense. 
There  was,  however,  one  curious  item  in  their 
code  of  morals,  which  is  singularly  unlike  that 
173 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

of  schoolboys  in  England,  in  Russia,  or  in  any 
other  country :  they  had  no  horror  of  a  man 
who  told  tales  to  the  authorities,  who,  in  school- 
boy language,  was  a  sneak.  "  The  Sneak "  did 
not  expose  himself  to  the  very  smallest  loss  of 
caste.  Indignation  against  him  was  an  unthink- 
able thing :  nobody  shunned  him,  people  were 
friends  with  him  ;  and  if  you  had  explained  in  the 
prison  the  whole  odiousness  of  his  behaviour,  they 
would  not  have  understood  you  at  all. 

"  There  was  one  of  the  gentlemen  prisoners,  a 
vicious  and  mean  fellow,  with  whom  from  the  first 
moment  I  would  have  nothing  to  do.  He  made 
friends  with  the  major's  orderly,  and  became  his 
spy ;  and  this  man  told  everything  he  heard 
about  the  prisoners  to  the  major.  We  all  knew 
this,  and  nobody  ever  once  thought  of  punishing 
or  even  of  blaming  the  scoundrel." 

This  is  the  more  remarkable  from  the  fact  that 
in  Russian  schools,  and  especially  in  those  schools 
where  military  discipline  prevails,  sneaking  is  the 
greatest  possible  crime.  In  speaking  of  another 
man  who  constantly  reported  everything  to  the 
authorities,  Dostoievsky  says  that  the  other  con- 
victs despised  him,  not  because  he  sneaked,  but 
because  he  did  not  know  how  to  behave  himself 
properly. 

The  convicts,  although  they  never  showed  the 
slightest  signs  of  remorse  or  regret  for  anything 

174 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

they  had  done  in  the  past,  were  allowed  by  their 
etiquette  to  express,  as  it  were  officially,  a  kind 
of  outward  resignation,  a  peaceful  logic,  such  as, 
"  We  are  a  fallen  people.  We  could  not  live  in 
freedom,  and  now  we  must  break  stones.  .  .  .  We 
could  not  obey  father  and  mother,  and  now  we 
must  obey  the  beating  of  the  drum."  The 
criminals  abused  each  other  mercilessly ;  they 
were  adepts  in  the  art,  more  than  adepts,  artists. 
Abuse  in  their  hands  became  a  science  and  a 
fine  art ;  their  object  was  to  find  not  so  much 
the  word  that  would  give  pain,  as  the  offensive 
thought,  the  spirit,  the  idea,  as  to  who  should 
be  most  venomous,  the  most  razor-like  in  his 
abuse. 

Another  striking  characteristic  which  also  re- 
minds one  of  schoolboys,  was  that  the  convict  would 
be,  as  a  rule,  obedient  and  submissive  in  the  ex- 
treme. But  there  were  certain  limits  beyond  which 
his  patience  was  exhausted,  and  when  once  this 
limit  was  overstepped  by  his  warders  or  the  officer 
in  charge,  he  was  ready  to  do  anything,  even  to 
commit  murder,  and  feared  no  punishment. 

Dostoievsky  tells  us  that  during  all  the  time 
he  was  in  prison  he  never  noticed  among  the 
convicts  the  slightest  sign  of  remorse,  the  slightest 
burden  of  spirit  with  regard  to  the  crimes  they 
had  committed ;  and  the  majority  of  them 
in   their   hearts    considered    themselves    perfectly 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

justified.  But  the  one  thing  they  could  not 
bear,  not  because  it  roused  feelings  of  emotion  in 
them,  but  because  it  was  against  the  etiquette 
of  the  place,  was  that  people  should  dwell 
upon  their  past  crimes.  He  quotes  one  instance 
of  a  man  who  was  drunk — the  convicts  could 
get  wine — beginning  to  relate  how  he  had  killed 
a  child  of  five  years  old.  The  whole  prison, 
which  up  till  then  had  been  laughing  at  his  jokes, 
cried  out  like  a  man,  and  the  assassin  was  obliged 
to  be  silent.  They  did  not  cry  out  from  indigna- 
tion, but  because  it  was  not  the  thing  to  speak 
of  that,  because  to  speak  of  that  was  considered 
to  be  violating  the  unwritten  code  of  the  prison. 
The  two  things  which  Dostoievsky  found  to  be 
the  hardest  trials  during  his  life  as  a  convict  were, 
first,  the  absolute  absence  of  privacy,  since  during 
the  whole  four  years  he  was  in  prison  he  was 
never  for  one  minute  either  by  day  or  night  alone ; 
and,  secondly,  the  bar  which  existed  between 
him  and  the  majority  of  the  convicts,  owing  to 
the  fact  that  he  was  a  gentleman.  The  convicts 
hated  people  of  the  upper  class ;  although  such 
men  were  on  a  footing  of  social  equality  with 
them,  the  convicts  never  recognised  them  as 
comrades.  Quite  unconsciously,  even  sincerely, 
they  regarded  them  as  gentlemen,  although  they 
liked  teasing  them  about  their  change  of  circum- 
stance.      They  despised  them   because  they  did 

176 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

not  know  how  to  work  properly,  and  Dostoievsky- 
says  that  he  was  two  years  in  prison  before  he 
won  over  some  of  the  convicts,  though  one  can 
see  from  his  accounts  of  what  they  said  to 
him,  how  much  they  must  have  liked  him,  and 
he  admits  that  the  majority  of  them  recognised, 
after  a  time,  that  he  was  a  good  fellow.  He 
points  out  how  much  harder  such  a  sentence  was 
on  one  of  his  own  class  than  on  a  peasant. 
The  peasant  arrives  from  all  ends  of  Russia,  no 
matter  where  it  be,  and  finds  in  prison  the  milieu 
he  is  accustomed  to,  and  into  which  he  falls  at 
once  without  difficulty.  He  is  treated  as  a 
brother  and  an  equal  by  the  people  who  are 
there.  With  a  gentleman  it  is  different,  and 
especially,  Dostoievsky  tells  us,  with  a  political 
offender,  whom  the  majority  of  the  convicts  hate. 
He  never  becomes  an  equal ;  they  may  like  him, 
as  they  obviously  did  in  Dostoievsky's  case,  but 
they  never  regard  him  as  being  on  a  footing  of 
equality  with  themselves.  They  preferred  even 
foreigners,  Germans  for  instance,  to  the  Russian 
gentlemen  ;  and  the  people  they  disliked  most  of 
all  were  the  gentlemen  Poles,  because  they  were 
almost  exaggeratedly  polite  towards  the  convicts, 
and  at  the  same  time  could  not  conceal  their 
innate  hatred  of  them.  With  regard  to  the  effect 
of  this  difference  of  class,  Dostoievsky,  in  the 
course  of  the  book,  tells  a  striking  story.     Every 

M  177 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

now  and  then,  when  the  convicts  had  a  grievance 
about  their  food  or  their  treatment,  they  would 
go  on  strike,  and  assemble  in  the  prison  yard. 
Dostoievsky  relates  that  one  day  there  was  a 
strike  about  the  food.  As  all  the  convicts  were 
gathered  together  in  the  yard,  he  joined  them, 
whereupon  he  was  immediately  told  that  that 
was  not  his  place,  that  he  had  better  go  to  the 
kitchen,  where  the  Poles  and  the  other  gentlemen 
were.  He  was  told  this  kindly  by  his  friends, 
and  men  who  were  less  friendly  to  him  made  it 
plain  by  shouting  out  sarcastic  remarks  to  him. 
Although  he  wished  to  stay,  he  was  told  that  he 
must  go.  Afterwards  the  strike  was  dispersed 
and  the  strikers  punished,  and  Dostoievsky  asked 
a  friend  of  his,  one  of  the  convicts,  whether  they 
were  not  angry  with  the  gentlemen  convicts. 

"  Why  ?  "  asked  this  man. 

"  Why,  because  we  did  not  join  in  the  strike." 

"  Why  should  you  have  joined  in  the  strike  ?  " 
asked  the  convict,  trying  to  understand,  "  You 
buy  your  own  food." 

"  Many  of  us  eat  the  ordinary  food,"  answered 
Dostoievsky,  "  but  I  should  have  thought  that 
apart  from  this  we  ought  to  have  joined,  out  of 
fellowship,  out  of  comradeship." 

"  But  you  are  not  our  comrade,"  said  the  other 
man  quite  simply ;  and  Dostoievsky  saw  that  the 
man  did    not  even    understand  what    he  meant. 
178 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

Dostoievsky  realised  that  he  could  never  be  a  real 
comrade  of  these  men  ;  he  might  be  a  convict  for 
a  century,  he  might  be  the  most  experienced  of 
criminals,  the  most  accomplished  of  assassins,  the 
barrier  existing  between  the  classes  would  never 
disappear :  to  them  he  would  always  be  a  gentle- 
man, it  would  always  be  a  case  of  "  You  go  your 
way,  we  go  ours."  And  this,  he  said,  was  the 
saddest  thing  he  experienced  during  the  whole  of 
his  prison  life. 

The  thing  which  perhaps  caused  him  the  most 
pleasure  was  the  insight  he  gained  into  the  kind- 
ness shown  to  convicts  by  outsiders.  Alluding  to 
the  doctors  in  the  prison  hospital,  he  says :  "  It 
is  well  known  to  prisoners  all  over  Russia  that 
the  men  who  sympathise  with  them  the  most  are 
the  doctors :  they  never  make  the  slightest  differ- 
ence in  their  treatment  of  prisoners,  as  nearly  all 
outsiders  do,  except  perhaps  the  Russian  poor. 
The  Russian  poor  man  never  blames  the  prisoner 
for  his  crime,  however  terrible  it  may  be ;  he 
forgives  him  everything  for  the  punishment  that 
he  is  enduring,  and  for  his  misfortune  in  general. 
It  is  not  in  vain  that  the  whole  of  the  Russian 
people  call  crime  a  misfortune  and  criminals 
'  unfortunates.'  This  definition  has  a  deep 
meaning ;  it  is  all  the  more  valuable  in  that  it  is 
made  unconsciously  and  instinctively." 

It  is  an  incident  revealing  this  pity  for  the 
179 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

unfortunate  which  gave  Dostoievsky  more  pleasure 
than  anything  during  his  stay  in  prison.  It  was 
the  first  occasion  on  which  he  directly  received 
alms.     He  relates  it  thus : 

"It  was  soon  after  my  arrival  in  the  prison  :  I 
was  coming  back  from  my  morning's  work,  accom- 
panied only  by  the  guard.  There  met  me  a 
mother  and  her  daughter.  The  little  girl  was  ten 
years  old,  as  pretty  as  a  cherub ;  I  had  already 
seen  them  once ;  the  mother  was  the  wife  of  a 
soldier,  a  widow ;  her  husband,  a  young  soldier, 
had  been  under  arrest,  and  had  died  in  the 
hospital  in  the  same  ward  in  which  I  had  lain 
ill.  The  wife  and  the  daughter  had  come  to 
say  good-bye  to  him,  and  both  had  cried  bitterly. 
Seeing  me,  the  little  girl  blushed,  whispered  some- 
thing to  her  mother,  and  she  immediately  stopped 
and  took  out  of  her  bundle  a  quarter  of  a  kopeck 
and  gave  it  to  the  little  girl.  The  child  ran  after 
me  and  called  out,  '  Unfortunate  !  For  the  sake 
of  Christ,  take  this  copper.'  I  took  the  piece  of 
money,  and  the  little  girl  ran  back  to  her  mother 
quite  contented.  I  kept  that  little  piece  of  money 
for  a  very  long  time." 

What  is  most  remarkable  about  the  book,  are 
the  many  and  various  discoveries  which  Dostoiev- 
sky made  with  regard  to  human  nature:  his 
power  of  getting  behind  the  gloomy  mask  of  the 
criminal  to  the  real   man  underneath,  his  success 

1 80 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

in  detecting  the  "  soul  of  goodness "  in  the 
criminals.  Every  single  one  of  the  characters 
he  describes  stands  out  in  startling  relief;  and 
if  one  began  to  quote  these  one  would  never 
end.      Nevertheless  I  will  quote  a  few  instances. 

There  is  Akim  Akimitch,  an  officer  who  had 
earned  his  sentence  thus  :  He  had  served  in  the 
Caucasus,  and  been  made  governor  of  some  small 
fortress.  One  night  a  neighbouring  Caucasian 
prince  attacked  his  fortress  and  burnt  it  down, 
but  was  defeated  and  driven  back.  Akim 
Akimitch  pretended  not  to  know  who  the  culprit 
was.  A  month  elapsed,  and  Akim  Akimitch 
asked  the  prince  to  come  and  pay  him  a  visit. 
He  came  without  suspecting  any  evil.  Akim 
Akimitch  marched  out  his  troops,  and  in  their 
presence  told  him  it  was  exceedingly  wrong  to 
burn  down  fortresses ;  and  after  giving  him 
minute  directions  as  to  what  the  behaviour  of  a 
peaceful  prince  should  be,  shot  him  dead  on  the 
spot,  and  reported  the  case  to  his  superiors.  He 
was  tried  and  condemned  to  death,  but  his 
sentence  was  commuted  to  twelve  years'  hard 
labour.  Akim  Akimitch  had  thus  once  in  his 
life  acted  according  to  his  own  judgment,  and  the 
result  had  been  penal  servitude.  He  had  not 
common  sense  enough  to  see  where  he  had  been 
guilty,  but  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  he 
never  under  any  circumstances  ought  to  judge  for 

i8i 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

himself.  He  thenceforth  renounced  all  initiative 
of  any  kind  or  sort,  and  made  himself  into 
a  machine.  He  was  uneducated,  extremely 
accurate,  and  the  soul  of  honesty ;  very  clever 
with  his  fingers,  he  was  by  turn  carpenter,  boot- 
maker, shoemaker,  gilder,  and  there  was  no  trade 
which  he  could  not  learn.  Akim  Akimitch 
arranged  his  life  in  so  methodical  a  manner  in 
every  detail,  with  such  pedantic  accuracy,  that  at 
first  he  almost  drove  Dostoievsky  mad,  although 
Akim  Akimitch  was  kindness  itself  to  him,  and 
helped  him  in  every  possible  way  during  the  first 
days  of  his  imprisonment.  Akim  Akimitch  ap- 
peared to  be  absolutely  indifferent  as  to  whether 
he  was  in  prison  or  not.  He  arranged  everything 
as  though  he  were  to  stay  there  for  the  rest  of  his 
life ;  everything,  from  his  pillow  upwards,  was 
arranged  as  though  no  change  could  possibly 
occur  to  him.  At  first  Dostoievsky  found  the 
ways  of  this  automaton  a  severe  trial,  but  he 
afterwards  became  entirely  reconciled  to  him. 

Then  there  was  Orlov,  one  of  the  more  desper- 
ate criminals.  He  was  a  soldier  who  had  deserted. 
He  was  of  small  stature  and  slight  build,  but  he 
was  absolutely  devoid  of  any  sort  of  fear. 
Dostoievsky  says  that  never  in  his  life  had  he 
met  with  such  a  strong,  such  an  iron  character  as 
this  man  had.  There  was,  in  this  man,  a  com- 
plete triumph  of  the   spirit  over   the  flesh.      He 

183 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

could  bear  any  amount  of  physical  punishment 
with  supreme  indifference.  He  was  consumed 
with  boundless  energy,  a  thirst  for  action,  for 
revenge,  and  for  the  accomplishment  of  the  aim 
which  he  set  before  him.  He  looked  down  on 
everybody  in  prison.  Dostoievsky  says  he  doubts 
whether  there  was  any  one  in  the  world  who  could 
have  influenced  this  man  by  his  authority.  He 
had  a  calm  outlook  on  the  world,  as  though  there 
existed  nothing  that  could  astonish  him ;  and 
although  he  knew  that  the  other  convicts  looked 
up  to  him  with  respect,  there  was  no  trace  of 
swagger  about  him  :  he  was  not  at  all  stupid,  and 
terribly  frank,  although  not  talkative.  Dostoievsky 
would  ask  him  about  his  adventures.  He  did  not 
much  like  talking  about  them,  but  he  always 
answered  frankly.  When  once  he  understood, 
however,  that  Dostoievsky  was  trying  to  find  out 
whether  he  felt  any  pangs  of  conscience  or 
remorse  for  what  he  had  done,  he  looked  at  him 
with  a  lofty  and  utter  contempt,  as  though  he 
suddenly  had  to  deal  with  some  stupid  little  boy 
who  could  not  reason  like  grown-up  people. 
There  was  even  an  expression  of  pity  in  his  face, 
and  after  a  minute  or  two  he  burst  out  in  the 
simplest  and  heartiest  laugh,  without  a  trace  of 
irony,  and  Dostoievsky  was  convinced  that  when 
left  to  himself  he  must  have  laughed  again  time 
after  time,  so  comic  did  the  thought  appear  to  him. 

183 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

One  of  the  most  sympathetic  characters  Dostoi- 
evsky describes  is  a  young  Tartar  called  Alei, 
who  was  not  more  than  twenty-two  years  old. 
He  had  an  open,  clever,  and  even  beautiful  face, 
and  a  good-natured  and  naive  expression  which 
won  your  heart  at  once.  His  smile  was  so  con- 
fiding, so  childlike  and  simple,  his  big  black  eyes 
so  soft  and  kind,  that  it  was  a  consolation  merely 
to  look  at  him.  He  was  in  prison  for  having 
taken  part  in  an  expedition  made  by  his  brothers 
against  a  rich  Armenian  merchant  whom  they 
had  robbed.  He  retained  his  softness  of  heart 
and  simplicity  and  his  strict  honesty  all  the  time 
he  was  in  prison  ;  he  never  quarrelled,  although  he 
knew  quite  well  how  to  stand  up  for  himself,  and 
everybody  liked  him.  "  I  consider  Alei,"  writes 
Dostoievsky,  "  as  being  far  from  an  ordinary 
personality,  and  I  count  my  acquaintance  with 
him  as  one  of  the  most  valuable  events  of  my 
life.  There  are  characters  so  beautiful  by  nature, 
so  near  to  God,  that  even  the  very  thought  that 
they  may  some  day  change  for  the  worse  seems 
impossible.  As  far  as  they  are  concerned  you 
feel  absolutely  secure,  and  I  now  feel  secure  for 
Alei.     Where  is  he  now  ?  " 

I  cannot  help  quoting  two  incidents  in  Dostoi- 
evsky's prison   life    which  seem  to   me  to  throw 
light  on  the  characteristics  of  the  people  with  whom 
he  mixed,  and  their  manner  of  behaviour;  the  first 
184 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

is  a  story  of  how  a  young  soldier  called  Sirotkin 
came  to  be  a  convict.  Here  is  the  story  which 
Dostoievsky  gives  us  in  the  man's  own  words : 

"  My  mother  loved  me  very  much.  When  I 
became  a  recruit,  I  have  since  heard,  she  lay 
down  on  her  bed  and  never  rose  again.  As  a 
recruit  I  found  life  bitter.  The  colonel  did  not 
like  me,  and  punished  me  for  everything.  And 
what  for  ?  I  was  obedient,  orderly,  I  never 
drank  wine,  I  never  borrowed,  and  that,  Alexander 
Petrovitch,  is  a  bad  business,  when  a  man 
borrows.  All  round  me  were  such  hard  hearts, 
there  was  no  place  where  one  could  have  a  good 
cry.  Sometimes  I  would  creep  into  a  corner  and 
cry  a  little  there.  Once  I  was  standing  on  guard 
as  a  sentry  ;  it  was  night.  The  wind  was  blowing, 
it  was  autumn,  and  so  dark  you  could  see  nothing. 
And  I  was  so  miserable,  so  miserable  !  I  took  my 
gun,  unscrewed  the  bayonet,  and  laid  it  on  the 
ground  ;  then  I  pulled  off  my  right  boot,  put 
the  muzzle  of  the  barrel  to  my  heart,  leaned 
heavily  on  it  and  pulled  the  trigger  with  my  big 
toe.  It  was  a  miss-fire.  I  examined  the  gun, 
cleaned  the  barrel,  put  in  another  cartridge  and 
again  pressed  it  to  my  breast.  Again  a  miss-fire. 
I  put  on  my  boot  again,  fixed  the  bayonet, 
shouldered  my  gun,  and  walked  up  and  down  in 
silence  ;  and  I  settled  that  whatever  might  happen  '^ 
I  would  get  out  of  being  a  recruit.      Half  an  hour 

185 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

later  the  colonel  rode  by,  at  the  head  of  the 
patrol,  right  past  me. 

"  'Is  that  the  way  to  stand  on  guard  ? '  he  said. 

"  I  took  the  gun  in  my  hand  and  speared  him 
with  the  bayonet  right  up  to  the  muzzle  of  the 
gun.  I  was  severely  flogged,  and  was  sent  here 
for  life." 

The  second  story  is  about  a  man  who  "  ex- 
changed "  his  sentence.  It  happened  thus :  A 
party  of  exiles  were  going  to  Siberia.  Some 
were  going  to  prison,  some  were  merely  exiled ; 
some  were  going  to  work  in  factories,  but  all 
were  going  together.  They  stopped  somewhere 
on  the  way  in  the  Government  of  Perm.  Among 
these  exiles  there  was  a  man  called  Mikhailov, 
who  was  condemned  to  a  life  sentence  for  murder. 
He  was  a  cunning  fellow,  and  made  up  his  mind 
to  exchange  his  sentence.  He  comes  across  a 
simple  fellow  called  Shushilov,  who  was  merely 
condemned  to  a  few  years'  transportation,  that  is 
to  say,  he  had  to  live  in  Siberia  and  not  in 
European  Russia  for  a  few  years.  This  latter 
man  was  naive,  ignorant,  and,  moreover,  had  no 
money  of  his  own.  Mikhailov  made  friends 
with  him  and  finally  made  him  drunk,  and  then 
proposed  to  him  an  exchange  of  sentences. 
Mikhailov  said  :  "  It  is  true  that  I  am  going  to 
prison,  but  I  am  going  to  some  special  depart- 
ment"  which  he  explained  was  a  particular  favour, 
i86 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

as  it  was  a  kind  of  first  class.  Shushilov,  under 
the  influence  of  drink,  and  being  simple-minded, 
was  full  of  gratitude  for  the  offer,  and  Mikhailov 
taking  advantage  of  his  simplicity  bought  his 
name  from  him  for  a  red  shirt  and  a  silver  rouble, 
which  he  gave  him  on  the  spot,  before  witnesses. 
On  the  following  day  Shushilov  spent  the  silver 
rouble  and  sold  the  red  shirt  for  drink  also,  but 
as  soon  as  he  became  sober  again  he  regretted 
the  bargain.  Then  Mikhailov  said  to  him  :  "  If 
you  regret  the  bargain  give  me  back  my  money." 
This  he  could  not  do ;  it  was  impossible  for  him 
to  raise  a  rouble.  At  the  next  etape  at  which 
they  stopped,  when  their  names  were  called  and 
the  officer  called  out  Mikhailov,  Shushilov  answered 
and  Mikhailov  answered  to  Shushilov's  name,  and 
the  result  was  that  when  they  left  Tobolsk, 
Mikhailov  was  sent  somewhere  to  spend  a  few 
years  in  exile,  and  Shushilov  became  a  "  lifer  "  ; 
and  the  special  department  which  the  other  man 
talked  of  as  a  kind  of  superior  class,  turned  out 
to  be  the  department  reserved  for  the  most 
desperate  criminals  of  all,  those  who  had  no 
chance  of  ever  leaving  prison,  and  who  were  most 
strictly  watched  and  guarded.  It  was  no  good 
complaining ;  there  was  no  means  of  rectifying 
the  mistake.  There  were  no  witnesses.  Had 
there  been  witnesses  they  would  have  perjured 
themselves.  And  so  Shushilov,  who  had  done 
187 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

nothing  at  all,  received  the  severest  sentence  the 
Russian  Government  had  power  to  inflict,  whereas 
the  other  man,  a  desperate  criminal,  merely  en- 
joyed a  few  years'  change  of  air  in  the  country. 
The  most  remarkable  thing  about  this  story  is 
this :  Dostoievsky  tells  us  that  tlie  convicts 
despised  Shushilov,  not  because  he  had  exchanged 
his  sentence,  but  because  he  had  made  so  bad  a 
bargain,  and  had  only  got  a  red  shirt  and  a  silver 
rouble.  Had  he  exchanged  it  for  two  or  three 
shirts  and  two  or  three  roubles,  they  would  have 
thought  it  quite  natural. 

The  whole  book  is  crammed  with  such  stories, 
each  one  of  which  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  the 
character  of  the  Russian  people. 

These  Letters  from  a  Dead  House  are  trans- 
lated into  French,  and  a  good  English  translation 
of  them  by  Marie  von  Thilo  was  published  by 
Messrs.  Longmans  in  1881.  But  it  is  now, 
I  believe,  out  of  print.  Yet  if  there  is  one 
foreign  book  in  the  whole  world  which  deserves 
to  be  well  known,  it  is  this  one.  Not  only 
because  it  throws  more  light  on  the  Russian 
people  than  any  other  book  which  has  ever  been 
written,  but  also  because  it  tells  in  the  simplest 
possible  way  illuminating  things  about  prisoners 
and  prison  life.  It  is  a  book  which  should  be 
read  by  all  legislators  ;  it  is  true  that  the  prison 
life  it  describes  is  now  obsolete.  It  deals  with 
188 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

convict  life  in  the  fifties,  when  everything  was  far 
more  antiquated,  brutal  and  severe  than  it  is  now. 
Yet  although  prisoners  had  to  run  the  gauntlet 
between  a  regiment  of  soldiers,  and  were  some- 
times beaten  nearly  to  death,  in  spite  of  the 
squalor  of  the  prison  and  in  spite  of  the  dreari- 
ness and  anguish  inseparable  from  their  lives,  the 
life  of  the  prisoners  stands  out  in  a  positively 
favourable  contrast  to  that  which  is  led  by  our 
convicts  in  what  Mr.  Chesterton  calls  our  "  clean 
and  cruel  prisons,"  where  our  prisoners  pick 
oakum  to-day  in  solitary  confinement.  The  proof 
of  this  is  that  Dostoievsky  was  able  to  write  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  studies  of  human  nature  that 
have  ever  been  written  out  of  his  prison  experi- 
ence. In  the  first  place,  the  prisoners  enjoyed 
human  fellowship.  They  all  had  tobacco ;  they 
played  cards ;  they  could  receive  alms,  and, 
though  this  was  more  difficult,  they  could  get 
wine.  There  were  no  rules  forbidding  them  to 
speak.  Each  prisoner  had  an  occupation  of  his 
own,  a  hobby,  a  trade,  in  which  he  occupied  all 
his  leisure  time.  Had  it  not  been  for  this, 
Dostoievsky  says,  the  prisoners  would  have  gone 
mad.  One  wonders  what  they  would  think  of 
an  English  prison,  where  the  prisoners  are  not 
even  allowed  to  speak  to  each  other.  Such  a 
regime  was  and  is  and  probably  always  will  be 
perfectly  unthinkable  to  a  Russian  mind.  Indeed 
189 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

this  point  reminds  me  of  a  startling  phrase  of  a 
Russian  revolutionary,  who  had  experiences  of 
Russian  prisons.  He  was  a  member  of  the  second 
Russian  Duma ;  he  had  spent  many  years  in 
prison  in  Russia.  In  the  winter  of  1906  there 
was  a  socialistic  conference  in  London  which  he 
attended.  When  he  returned  to  Russia  he  was 
asked  by  his  fellow-politicians  to  lecture  on  the 
liberty  of  English  institutions.  He  refused  to  do 
so.  "  A  Russian,"  he  said,  "  is  freer  in  prison 
than  an  Englishman  is  at  large." 

The  secret  of  the  merit  of  this  extraordinary 
book  is  also  the  secret  of  the  unique  quality  which 
we  find  in  all  Dostoievsky's  fiction.  It  is  this : 
Dostoievsky  faces  the  truth ;  he  faces  what  is  bad, 
what  is  worst,  what  is  most  revolting  in  human 
nature ;  he  does  not  put  on  blinkers  and  deny 
the  existence  of  evil,  like  many  English  writers, 
and  he  does  not,  like  Zola,  indulge  in  filthy 
analysis  and  erect  out  of  his  beastly  investiga- 
tions a  pseudo-scientific  theory  based  on  the 
belief  that  all  human  nature  is  wholly  bad. 
Dostoievsky  analyses,  not  in  order  to  experiment 
on  the  patient  and  to  satisfy  his  own  curiosity, 
but  in  order  to  cure  and  to  comfort  him.  And 
having  faced  the  evil  and  recognised  it,  he  pro- 
ceeds to  unearth  the  good  from  underneath  it ; 
and  he  accepts  the  whole  because  of  the  good, 
and  gives  thanks  for  it.  He  finds  God's  image 
190 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

in  the  worst  of  the  criminals,  and  shows  it  to  us, 
and  for  that  reason  this  book  is  one  of  the 
most  important  books  ever  written.  Terrible  as 
it  is,  and  sad  as  it  is,  no  one  can  read  it  without 
feeling  better  and  stronger  and  more  hopeful. 
For  Dostoievsky  proves  to  us — so  far  from 
complaining  of  his  lot — that  life  in  the  Dead 
House  is  not  only  worth  living,  but  full  of 
unsuspected  and  unexplored  riches,  rare  pearls  of 
goodness,  shining  gems  of  kindness,  and  secret 
springs  of  pity.  He  leaves  prison  with  something 
like  regret,  and  he  regards  his  four  years'  experi- 
ence there  as  a  special  boon  of  Providence,  the 
captain  jewel  of  his  life.  He  goes  out  saved  for 
ever  from  despair,  and  full  of  that  wisdom  more 
precious  than  rubies  which  is  to  be  found  in  the 
hearts  of  children. 

V 

Crime  and  Punishment 

Crime  and  Punishment  was  published  in  1866. 
It  is  a  book  which  brought  Dostoievsky  fame  and 
popularity,  and  by  which,  in  Europe  at  any  rate, 
he  is  still  best  known.  It  is  the  greatest  tragedy 
about  a  murderer  that  has  been  written  since 
Macbeth, 

In  the  chapter  on  Tolstoy  and  Tourgeniev, 
I  pointed  out  that  the  Russian  character  could 
191 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

roughly  be  divided  into  two  types,  which 
dominate  the  whole  of  Russian  fiction,  the 
two  types  being  Lucifer,  the  embodiment  of 
invincible  pride,  and  Ivan  DuraJc,  the  wise  fool. 
This  is  especially  true  with  regard  to  Dostoievsky's 
novels.  Nearly  all  the  most  important  characters 
in  his  books  represent  one  or  other  of  these  two 
types.  Raskolnikov,  the  hero  of  Crime  and 
Punishment,  is  the  embodiment  of  the  Lucifer 
type,  and  the  whole  motive  and  mainspring  of  his 
character  is  pride. 

Raskolnikov  is  a  Nihilist  in  the  true  sense  of 
the  word,  not  a  political  Nihilist  nor  an  intellectual 
Nihilist  like  Tourgeniev's  Bazarov,  but  a  moral 
Nihilist ;  that  is  to  say,  a  man  who  strives  to 
act  without  principle  and  to  be  unscrupulous, 
who  desires  to  put  himself  beyond  and  above 
human  moral  conventions.  His  idea  is  that  if 
he  can  trample  on  human  conventions,  he  will  be 
a  sort  of  Napoleon.  He  goes  to  pawn  a  jewel 
at  an  old  woman  pawnbroker's,  and  the  idea 
which  is  to  affect  his  whole  future  vaguely  takes 
root  in  his  mind,  namely,  that  an  intelligent 
man,  possessed  of  the  fortune  of  this  pawnbroker, 
could  do  anything,  and  that  the  only  necessary 
step  is  to  suppress  this  useless  and  positively 
harmful  old  woman.  He  thus  expresses  the 
idea  later : 

"  I  used  to  put  myself  this  question :  If 
192 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

Napoleon  had  found  himself  in  my  position  and  had 
not  wherewith  to  begin  his  career,  and  there  was 
neither  Toulon,  nor  Egypt,  nor  the  passage  of  the 
Alps,  and  if  there  were,  instead  of  these  splendid 
and  monumental  episodes,  simply  some  ridiculous 
old  woman,  a  usurer  whom  he  would  have  to 
kill  in  order  to  get  her  money,  would  he  shrink 
from  doing  this  if  there  were  no  other  alternative, 
merely  because  it  would  not  be  a  fine  deed  and 
because  it  would  be  sinful  ?  Now  I  tell  you  that 
I  was  possessed  by  this  problem  for  a  long  time, 
and  that  I  felt  deeply  ashamed  when  I  at  last 
guessed,  suddenly  as  it  were,  that  not  only  would 
he  not  be  frightened  at  the  idea,  but  that  the  thought 
that  the  thing  was  not  important  and  grandiose 
enough  would  not  even  enter  into  his  head  :  he 
would  not  even  understand  where  the  need  for 
hesitation  lay ;  and  if  there  were  no  other  way 
open  to  him,  he  would  kill  the  woman  without 
further  reflection.  Well,  I  ceased  reflecting,  and  I 
killed  her,  following  the  example  of  my  authority." 
Raskolnikov  is  obsessed  by  the  idea,  just  as 
Macbeth  is  obsessed  by  the  prophecy  of  the 
three  witches,  and  circumstances  seem  to  play 
the  part  of  Fate  in  a  Greek  tragedy,  and  to 
lead  him  against  his  will  to  commit  a  horrible 
crime.  "  He  is  mechanically  forced,"  says 
Professor  Bruckner  in  his  History  of  Russian 
Literature^  "  into  performing  the  act,  as  if  he  had 
N  193 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

gone  too  near  machinery  in  motion,  had  been 
caught  by  a  bit  of  his  clothing,  and  cut  to 
pieces."  As  soon  as  he  has  killed  the  old 
woman,  he  is  fatally  led  into  committing  another 
crime  immediately  after  the  first  crime  is  com- 
mitted. He  thinks  that  by  committing  this  crime 
he  will  have  trampled  on  human  conventions, 
that  he  will  be  above  and  beyond  morality,  a 
Napoleon,  a  Superman.  The  tragedy  of  the 
book  consists  in  his  failure,  and  in  his  realising 
that  he  has  failed.  Instead  of  becoming  stronger 
than  mankind,  he  becomes  weaker  than  mankind ; 
instead  of  having  conquered  convention  and 
morality,  he  is  himself  vanquished  by  them.  He 
finds  that  as  soon  as  the  crime  is  committed  the 
whole  of  his  relation  towards  the  world  is  changed, 
and  his  life  becomes  a  long  struggle  with  himself, 
a  revolt  against  the  moral  consequences  of  his  act. 
His  instinct  of  self-preservation  is  in  conflict  with 
the  horror  of  what  he  has  done  and  the  need  for 
confession.  Raskolnikov,  as  I  have  said,  is  the 
embodiment  of  pride ;  pride  is  the  mainspring  of 
his  character.  He  is  proud  enough  to  build 
gigantic  conceptions,  to  foster  the  ambition  of 
placing  himself  above  and  beyond  humanity,  but 
his  character  is  not  strong  enough  to  bear  the 
load  of  his  ideas.  He  thinks  he  has  the  makings 
of  a  great  man  in  him.,  and  in  order  to  prove  this 
to  himself  he  commits  a  crime  that  would  put  an 

194 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

ordinary  man  beyond  the  pale  of  humanity, 
because  he  thinks  that  being  an  extraordinary 
man  he  will  remain  within  the  pale  of  humanity 
and  not  suffer.  His  pride  suffers  a  mortal  blow 
when  he  finds  that  he  is  weak,  and  that  the  moral 
consequences  of  his  act  face  him  at  every  turn. 
He  fights  against  this,  he  strives  not  to  recognise 
it ;  he  deliberately  seeks  the  company  of  detectives  ; 
he  discusses  murder  and  murderers  with  them 
minutely,  and  with  a  recklessness  which  leads  him 
to  the  very  brink  of  the  precipice,  when  it  would 
need  but  a  word  more  for  him  to  betray  himself. 
The  examining  magistrate,  indeed,  guesses  that 
he  has  committed  the  crime,  and  plays  with 
him  as  a  cat  plays  with  a  mouse,  being  perfectly 
certain  that  in  the  long-run  he  will  confess  of  his 
own  accoi'd.  The  chapters  which  consist  of  the 
duel  between  these  two  men  are  the  most  poignant 
in  anguish  which  I  have  ever  read.  I  have  seen 
two  of  these  scenes  acted  on  the  stage,  and 
several  people  in  the  audience  had  hysterics 
before  they  were  over.  At  last  the  moment  of 
expiation  comes,  though  that  of  regeneration  is  still 
far  distant.  Raskolnikov  loves  a  poor  prostitute 
named  Sonia.  His  act,  his  murder,  has  affected 
his  love  for  Sonia,  as  it  has  affected  the  rest  of  his 
life,  and  has  charged  it  with  a  sullen  despair. 
Sonia,  who  loves  him  as  the  only  man  who 
has  never  treated  her  with  contempt,  sees  that  he 

195 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

has  some  great  load  on  his  mind,  that  he  is 
tortured  by  some  hidden  secret.  She  tries  in 
vain  to  get  him  to  tell  her  what  it  is,  but  at  last 
he  comes  to  her  with  the  intention  of  telling  her, 
and  she  reads  the  speaking  secret  in  his  eyes. 
As  soon  as  she  knows,  she  tells  him  that  he  must 
kiss  the  earth  which  he  has  stained,  and  confess  to 
the  whole  world  that  he  has  committed  murder. 
Then,  she  says,  God  will  send  him  a  new  life.  At 
first  he  refuses  :  he  says  tha^society  is  worse  than 
he,  that  greater  crimes  than  his  are  committed 
every  day  ;  that  those  who  commit  them  are  highly 
honoured.  Sonia  speaks  of  his  suffering,  and  of  the 
torture  he  will  undergo  by  keeping  his  dread  secret, 
but  he  will  not  yet  give  in,  nor  admit  that  he  is 
not  a  strong  man,  that  he  is  really  a  louse — which 
is  the  name  he  gives  to  all  human  beings  who  are 
not  "  Supermen."  Sonia  says  that  they  must  go 
to  exile  together,  and  that  by  suffering  together 
they  will  expiate  his  deed.  This  is  one  of 
Dostoievsky's  principal  ideas,  or  rather  it  is  the 
interpretation  and  conception  of  Christianity 
which  you  will  most  frequently  meet  with  among 
the  Russian  people, — ^that  suffering  is  good  in 
itself,  and  especially  suffefrng~^trr~«ef»*non  with 
some  one  else. 

After  Raskolnikov  has  confessed  his  crime  to 
Sonia,  he  still  hovers  round  and  round  the  police, 
like  a  moth  fatally  attracted  by  a  candle,  and  at 

196 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

last  he  makes  open  confession,  and  is  condemned 
to  seven  years'  penal  servitude.  But  although 
he  has  been  defeated  in  the  battle  with  his 
idea,  although  he  has  not  only  failed,  but  failed 
miserably,  even  after  he  has  confessed  his  crime  and 
is  paying  the  penalty  for  it  in  prison,^is  pride  still 
survives.  When  he  arrives  in  prison,  it  is  not  the 
hardships  of  prison  life,  it  is  not  the  hard  labour, 
the  coarse  food,  the  shaven  head,  the  convict's 
dress,  that  weigh  on  his  spirit ;  nor  does  he  feel 
remorse  for  his  crime.  But  here  once  more  in 
prison  he  begins  to  criticise  and  reflect  on  his 
former  actions,  and  finds  them  neither  foolish  nor 
horrible  as  he  did  before.  "  In  what,"  he  thinks, 
"  was  my  conception  stupider  than  many  con- 
ceptions and  theories  which  are  current  in  the 
world  ?  One  need  only  look  at  the  matter  from  an 
independent  standpoint,  and  with  a  point-of-view 
unbiased  by  conventional  ideas,  and  the  idea 
will  not  seem  so  strange.  And  why  does  my 
deed,"  he  thought  to  himself,  "  appear  so  ugly  ?  In 
what  way  was  it  an  evil  deed  ?  My  conscience  is 
at  rest.  Naturally  I  committed  a  criminal  offence, 
I  broke  the  letter  of  the  law  and  I  shed  blood. 
Well,  take  my  head  in  return  for  the  letter  of  the 
law  and  make  an  end  of  it !  Of  course,  even 
many  of  those  men  who  have  benefited  mankind 
and  who  were  never  satiated  with  power,  after  they 
had  seized  it  for  themselves,  ought  to  have  been 
197 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

executed  as  soon  as  they  had  taken  their  first 
step,  but  these  people  succeeded  in  taking  further 
steps,  and  therefore  they  are  justified :  I  did  not 
succeed,  and  therefore  perhaps  I  had  not  the  right 
to  take  the  first  step." 

Raskolnikov  accordingly  considered  that  his 
crime  consisted  solely  in  this,  that  he  was  not 
siion^enough  to  carry  it  through  to  the  end,  and 
not  strong  enough  not  to  confess  it.  He  also  tor- 
tured himself  witli  another  tliought :  why  did  he 
not  kill  himself  as  soon  as  he  recognised  the  truth  ? 
Why  did  he  prefer  the  weakness  of  confession  ? 

The  other  convicts  in  the  prison  disliked  him, 
distrusted  him,  and  ended  by  hating  him. 
Dostoievsky's  own  experience  of  convict  life 
enables  him  in  a  short  space  to  give  us  a  striking 
picture  of  Raskolnikov's  relations  with  the  other 
convicts.  He  gradually  becomes  aware  of  the 
vast  gulf  which  there  is  between  him  and  the 
others.  The  class  barrier  which  rises  between 
him  and  them,  is  more  difficult  to  break  down 
than  that  caused  by  a  difference  in  nation- 
ality. At  the  same  time,  he  noticed  that  in  the 
prison  there  were  political  prisoners,  Poles,  for 
instance,  and  officers,  who  looked  down  on  the 
other  convicts  as  though  they  were  insects, 
ciphers  of  ignorance,  and  despised  them  accord- 
ingly. But  he  is  unable  to  do  this,  he  cannot 
help  seeing  that  these  '  ciphers  '  are  far  cleverer 
198 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

in  many  cases  than  the  men  who  look  down  on 
them.  On  the  other  hand,  he  is  astonished  that 
they  all  love  Sonia,  who  has  followed  him  to 
the  penal  settlement  where  his  prison  is,  and 
lives  in  the  town.  The  convicts  rarely  see  her, 
meeting  her  only  from  time  to  time  at  their  work  ; 
and  yet  they  adore  her,  because  she  has  followed 
Raskolnikov.  The  hatred  of  the  other  convicts 
against  him  grows  so  strong  that  one  day  at 
Easter,  when  he  goes  to  church  with  them,  they 
turn  on  him  and  say :  "  You  have  no  right  to 
go  to  church  :  you  do  not  believe  in  God,  you  are 
an  atheist,  you  ought  to  be  killed."  He  had 
never  spoken  with  them  of  God  or  of  religion, 
and  yet  they  wished  to  kill  him  as  an  atheist. 
He  only  narrowly  escaped  being  killed  by  the 
timely  interference  of  a  sentry.  To  the  truth  of 
this  incident  I  can  testify  by  personal  experience, 
as  I  have  heard  Russian  peasants  and  soldiers 
say  that  such  and  such  a  man  was  religious  and 
that  such  and  such  a  man  was  "  godless,"  although 
these  men  had  never  mentioned  religion  to  them  ; 
and  they  were  always  right. 

Then  Raskolnikov  fell  ill  and  lay  for  some 
time  in  delirium  in  the  hospital.  After  his 
recovery  he  learns  that  Sonia  has  fallen  ill 
herself,  and  has  not  been  near  the  prison, 
and  a  great  sadness  comes  over  him.  At  last 
she  recovers,  and  he  meets  her  one  day  at  his 
199 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

work.  Something  melts  in  his  heart,  he  knows 
not  how  or  why  ;  he  falls  at  her  feet  and  cries ; 
and  from  that  moment  a  new  life  begins  for  him. 
His  despair  has  rolled  away  like  a  cloud :  his 
heart  has  risen  as  though  from  the  dead. 

Crime  and  Punishnent,  the  best  known  of  all 
Dostoievsky's  works,  is  certainly  the  most  power- 
ful. The  anguish  of  mind  which  Raskolnikov 
goes  through  tortures  the  reader.  Dostoievsky 
seems  to  have  touched  the  extreme  limit  of 
suffering  which  the  human  soul  can  experience 
when  it  descends  into  hell.  At  the  same  time,  he 
never  seems  to  be  gloating  over  the  suffering,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  to  be  revealing  the  agonies  of  the 
human  spirit  in  order  to  pour  balm  upon  them. 
There  is  an  episode  earlier  in  the  story,  when 
Raskolnikov  kneels  down  before  Sonia,  and  speaks 
words  which  might  be  taken  as  the  motto  of  this 
book,  and  indeed  of  nearly  all  of  Dostoievsky's 
books  :  "  It  is  not  before  you  that  I  am  kneeling, 
but  before  all  the  suffering  of  mankind." 

It  is  in  this  book  more  than  in  any  of  his  other 
books  that  one  has  the  feeling  that  Dostoievsky 
is  kneeling  down  before  the  great  agonies  that 
the  human  soul  can  endure  :  and  in  doing  this,  he 
teaches  us  how  to  endure  and  how  to  hope. 
Apart  from  the  astounding  analysis  to  be  found 
in  the  book,  and  the  terrible  network  of  details 
of  which  the  conflict  between    Raskolnikov    and 

200 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

his  obsession  consists :  apart  from  the  duel  of 
tongues  between  the  examining  magistrate,  who  is 
determined  that  the  criminal  shall  be  condemned, 
not  on  account  of  any  circumstantial  evidence, 
but  by  his  own  confession,  and  who  drives  the 
criminal  to  confession  by  playing  upon  his  ob- 
session :  apart  from  all  this  main  action,  there  is  a 
wealth  of  minor  characters,  episodes  and  scenes, 
all  of  which  are  indispensable  to  the  main  thread 
of  tragedy  which  runs  through  the  whole.  The 
book,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  did  not  receive 
anything  like  its  full  recognition  in  1866  when  it 
appeared,  and  now,  in  1909,  it  stands  higher  in 
the  estimation  of  all  those  who  are  qualified  to 
judge  it  than  it  did  then.  This  can  be  said  of 
very  few  books  published  in  Europe  in  the 
sixties.  For  all  the  so-called  psychological  and 
analytical  novels  which  have  been  published  since 
1 866  in  France  and  in  England  not  only  seem  pale 
and  lifeless  compared  with  Dostoievsky's  fierce 
revelations,  but  not  one  of  them  has  a  drop  of  his 
large  humanity,  or  a  breath  of  his  fragrant  good- 
ness. 

VI 

The  Idiot 

Although  Crime  and  Punishment  is  the  most 
powerful,   and    probably     the     most     popular   of 
Dostoievsky's  books,  I  do  not  think  it  is  the  most 
201 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

characteristic ;  that  is  to  say,  I  do  not  think  it 
possesses  in  so  high  a  degree  those  qualities 
which  are  pecuHar  to  his  genius.  More  char- 
acteristic still  is  The  Idiot,  in  the  main  character 
of  which  the  very  soul  and  spirit  of  Dostoievsky 
breathe  and  live.  The  hero  of  The  Idiot,  Prince 
Mwishkin,  is  the  type  of  Ivan  Durak,  the  simple 
fool  who  by  his  simplicity  outwits  the  wisdom  of 
the  wise. 

We  make  his  acquaintance  in  a  third-class 
railway  carriage  of  the  train  which  is  arriving  at 
St.  Petersburg  from  Warsaw.  He  is  a  young 
man  about  twenty-six  years  old,  with  thick  fair 
hair,  sloping  shoulders,  and  a  very  slight  fair 
beard  ;  his  eyes  are  large,  light-blue,  and  pene- 
trating ;  in  his  expression  there  is  something 
tranquil  but  burdensome,  something  of  that 
strange  look  which  enables  physicians  to  recog- 
nise at  a  first  glance  a  victim  of  the  falling 
sickness.  In  his  hand  he  is  carrying  a  bundle 
made  of  old  foulaj'd,  which  is  his  whole  luggage. 
A  fellow-traveller  enters  into  conversation  with 
him.  He  answers  with  unusual  alacrity.  Being 
asked  whether  he  has  been  absent  long,  he  says 
that  it  is  over  four  years  since  he  was  in  Russia, 
that  he  was  sent  abroad  on  account  of  his  health 
— on  account  of  some  strange  nervous  illness 
like  St.  Vitus'  dance.  As  he  listens,  his  fellow- 
traveller    laughs     several     times,    and    especially 

202 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

when  to  the  question,  "  Did  they  cure  you  ?  "  the 
fair-haired  man  answers,  "  No,  they  did  not  cure 
me."  The  dark-haired  man  is  Rogozhin,  a 
merchant.  These  two  characters  are  the  two 
figures  round  which  the  drama  of  the  book 
centres  and  is   played. 

The  purpose  of  Prince  Mwishkin  in  coming  to 
St.  Petersburg  is  to  find  a  distant  relation  of  his, 
the  wife  of  a  General  Epanchin.  He  has  already 
written  to  her  from  Switzerland,  but  has  received 
no  answer.  He  presents  himself  at  the  general's 
house  with  his  bundle.  A  man  in  livery  opens 
the  door  and  regards  him  with  suspicion.  At 
last,  after  he  has  explained  clearly  and  at  some 
length  that  he  is  Prince  Mwishkin,  and  that 
it  is  necessary  for  him  to  see  the  general  on 
important  business,  the  servant  leads  him  into 
a  small  front-hall  into  which  the  anteroom 
(where  guests  are  received)  of  the  general's 
study  opens.  He  delivers  him  into  the  hands 
of  another  servant  who  is  dressed  in  black. 
This  man  tells  the  prince  to  wait  in  the  ante- 
room and  to  leave  his  bundle  in  the  front- 
hall.  He  sits  down  in  his  armchair  and  looks 
with  severe  astonishment  at  the  prince,  who, 
instead  of  taking  the  suggestion,  sits  down 
beside  him  on  a  chair,  with  his  bundle  in  his 
hands. 

"  If  you  will  allow  me,"  said  the  prince,  "  I 
203 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

would  rather  wait  here  with  you.     What  should 
I  do  there  alone  ?  " 

"  The  hall,"  answered  the  servant,  "  is  not  the 
place  for  you,  because  you  are  a  visitor,  or  in  other 
words,  a  guest.  You  wish  to  see  the  general  him- 
self?" The  servant  obviously  could  not  reconcile 
himself  with  the  idea  of  showing  in  such  a  visitor, 
and  decided  to  question  him  further. 

"  Yes,  I  have  come  on  business,"  began  the 
prince. 

"  I  do  not  ask  you  what  is  your  business.  My 
business  is  simply  to  announce  you.  But  without 
asking  the  secretary  I  said  I  would  not  announce 
you."  The  suspicions  of  the  servant  contin- 
ually seemed  to  increase.  The  prince  was  so 
unlike  the  ordinary  run  of  everyday  visitors. 
" .  .  .  You  are,  so  to  speak,  from  abroad  ?  "  asked 
the  servant  at  last,  and  hesitated  as  if  he  wished 
to  say,  "  You  are  really  Prince  Mwishkin  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  have  this  moment  come  from  the  train. 
I  think  that  you  wished  to  ask  me  whether  I  am 
really  Prince  Mwishkin,  and  that  you  did  not  ask 
me  out  of  politeness." 

"  H'm  1 "  murmured  the  astonished  servant. 

"  I  assure  you  that  I  was  not  telling  lies,  and 
that  you  will  not  get  into  trouble  on  account  of  me. 
That  I  am  dressed  as  I  am  and  carrying  a  bundle 
like  this  is  not  astonishing,  for  at  the  present 
moment  my  circumstances  are  not  flourishing." 
204 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

"  H'm  !  I  am  not  afraid  of  that.  You  see  I  am 
obliged  to  announce  you,  and  the  secretary  will 
come  to  see  you  unless  ...  the  matter  is  like 
this  :  You  have  not  come  to  beg  from  the  general, 
may  I  be  so  bold  as  to  ask  ?  " 

"  Oh  no,  you  may  rest  assured  of  that.  I  have 
come  on  other  business." 

"  Pardon  me.  Please  wait  for  the  secretary ; 
he  is  busy  .  .  ." 

"Very  well.  If  I  shall  have  to  wait  long  I 
should  like  to  ask  you  whether  I  might  smoke. 
I  have  a  pipe  and  some  tobacco." 

"  Smoke  !  "  The  servant  looked  at  him  with 
contempt,  as  if  he  could  not  believe  his  ears. 
"  Smoke  ?  No,  you  cannot  smoke  here.  And 
what  is  more,  you  should  be  ashamed  of  thinking 
of  such  a  thing.     Well,  this  is  queer  !  " 

"  I  did  not  mean  in  this  room,  but  I  would  go 
somewhere  if  you  would  show  me,  because  I  am 
accustomed  to  it,  and  I  have  not  smoked  now  for 
three  hours.     But  as  you  like." 

"  Now,  how  shall  I  announce  you  ?  "  murmured 
the  servant  as  though  almost  unwillingly  to 
himself.  "  In  the  first  place  you  ought  not  to  be 
here,  but  in  the  anteroom,  because  you  are  a 
visitor,  that  is  to  say,  a  guest,  and  I  am  re- 
sponsible. Have  you  come  to  live  here  ? "  he 
asked,  looking  again  at  the  prince's  bundle,  which 
evidently  disturbed  him. 

20$ 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

"  No,  I  don't  think  so ;  even  if  they  invited  me, 
I  should  not  stay.  I  have  simply  come  to  make 
acquaintance,  nothing  more." 

"  How  do  you  mean,  to  make  acquaintance  ?  " 
the  servant  asked,  with  trebled  suspicion  and 
astonishment.  "  You  said  at  first  that  you  had 
come  on  business." 

"  Well,  it's  not  exactly  business ;  that  is  to  say, 
if  you  like,  it  is  business, — it  is  only  to  ask 
advice.  But  the  chief  thing  is  that  I  have  come 
to  introduce  myself,  because  I  and  the  general's 
wife  are  both  descendants  from  the  Mwishkins, 
and  besides  myself  there  are  no  Mwishkins 
left." 

"  So,  what's  more  you  are  a  relation  !  "  said 
the  frightened  servant. 

"  No,  not  exactly  a  relation, — that  is  to  say,  if 
you  go  back  far  enough,  we  are,  of  course,  relations  ; 
but  so  far  back  that  it  doesn't  count !  I  wrote  to 
the  general's  wife  a  letter  from  abroad,  but  she 
did  not  answer  me.  All  the  same,  I  considered 
it  necessary  to  make  her  acquaintance  as  soon  as 
I  arrived.  I  am  explaining  all  this  to  you  so 
that  you  should  not  have  any  doubts,  because  I 
see  that  you  are  disquieted.  Announce  that  it  is 
Prince  Mwishkin,  and  that  will  be  enough  to 
explain  the  object  of  my  visit.  If  they  will  see 
me,  all  will  be  well.  If  they  do  not,  very  likely 
all  will  be  well  too.  But  I  don't  think  they 
206 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

can  help  receiving  me,  because  the  general's  wife 
will  naturally  wish  to  see  the  oldest,  indeed  the  only 
representative  of  her  family ;  and  she  is  most 
particular  about  keeping  up  relations  with  her 
family,  as  I  have  heard." 

"  The  conversation  of  the  prince  seemed  as 
simple  as  possible,  but  the  simpler  it  was,  the 
more  absurd  it  became  under  the  circumstances ; 
and  the  experienced  footman  could  not  help  feel- 
ing something  which  was  perfectly  right  between 
man  and  man,  and  utterly  wrong  between  man  and 
servant.  Servants  are  generally  far  cleverer  than 
their  masters  think,  and  this  one  thought  that 
two  things  might  be  possible ;  either  the  prince 
had  come  to  ask  for  money,  or  that  he  was  simply 
a  fool  without  ambition, — because  an  ambitious 
prince  would  not  remain  in  the  front-hall  talking 
of  his  affairs  with  a  footman,  and  would  he  not 
probably  be  responsible  and  to  blame  in  either 
the  one  case  or  the  other  ?  " 

I  have  quoted  this  episode,  which  occurs  in 
the  second  chapter  of  the  book,  in  full,  because 
in  it  the  whole  character  of  the  prince  is  revealed. 
He  is  the  wise  fool.  He  suffers  from  epilepsy, 
and  this  "  sacred  "  illness  which  has  fallen  on  him 
has  destroyed  all  those  parts  of  the  intellect  out 
of  which  our  faults  grow,  such  as  irony,  arrogance 
and  egoism.  He  is  absolutely  simple.  He  has 
the  brains  of  a  man,  the  tenderness  of  a  woman 
207 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

and  the  heart  of  a  child.  He  knows  nothing  of 
any  barriers,  either  of  class  or  character.  He  is 
the  same  and  absolutely  himself  with  every  one 
he  meets.  And  yet  his  unsuspicious  naivete,  his 
untarnished  sincerity  and  simplicity,  are  combined 
with  penetrating  intuition,  so  that  he  can  read 
other  people's  minds  like  a  book. 

The  general  receives  him,  and  he  is  just  as 
frank  and  simple  with  the  general  as  he  has  been 
with  the  servant.  He  is  entirely  without  means, 
and  has  nothing  in  the  world  save  his  little  bundle. 
The  general  inquires  whether  his  handwriting  is 
good,  and  resolves  to  get  him  some  secretarial 
work ;  he  gives  him  2  5  roubles,  and  arranges 
that  the  prince  shall  live  in  his  secretary's  house. 
The  general  makes  the  prince  stay  for  luncheon, 
and  introduces  him  to  his  family.  The  general's 
wife  is  a  charming,  rather  childish  person,  and 
she  has  three  daughters,  Alexandra,  Adelaide 
and  Aglaia.  The  prince  astonishes  them  very 
much  by  his  simplicity.  They  cannot  quite 
understand  at  first  whether  he  is  a  child  or 
a  knave,  but  his  simplicity  conquers  them.  After 
they  have  talked  of  various  matters,  his  life  in 
Switzerland,  the  experiences  of  a  man  con- 
demned to  death,  which  had  been  related  to  him 
and  which  I  have  already  quoted,  an  execution 
which  he  had  witnessed,  one  of  the  girls  asks 
him  if  he  was  ever  in  love. 
208 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

"  No,"  he  says,  "  I  have  never  been  in  love  .  .  , 
I  was  happy  otherwise." 

"  How  was  that  ?  "  they  ask. 

Then  he  relates  the  following :  "  Where  I  was 
living  they  were  all  children,  and  I  spent  all  my 
time  with  the  children,  and  only  with  them.  They 
were  the  children  of  the  village ;  they  all  went  to 
school.  I  never  taught  them,  there  was  a  school- 
master for  that.  ...  I  perhaps  did  teach  them 
too,  in  a  way,  for  I  was  more  with  them,  and  all 
the  four  years  that  I  spent  there  went  in  this  w^ay. 
I  had  need  of  nothing  else.  I  told  them  every- 
thing, I  kept  nothing  secret  from  them.  Their 
fathers  and  relations  were  angry  with  me  because 
at  last  the  children  could  not  do  without  me,  and 
always  came  round  me  in  crowds,  and  the  school- 
master in  the  end  became  my  greatest  enemy. 
1  made  many  enemies  there,  all  on  account  of 
the  children.  And  what  were  they  afraid  of? 
You  can  tell  a  child  everything — everything.  I 
have  always  been  struck  by  the  thought  of  how 
ignorant  grown-up  people  are  of  children,  how 
ignorant  even  fathers  and  mothers  are  of  their 
own  children.  You  should  conceal  nothing  from 
children  under  the  pretext  that  they  are  small, 
and  that  it  is  too  soon  for  them  to  know.  That 
is  a  sad,  an  unhappy  thought.  And  how  well 
children  themselves  understand  that  their  fathers 
are  thinking  they  are  too  small  and  do  not 
o  209 


LANDxMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

understand  anything — when  they  really  under- 
stand everything.  Grown-up  people  do  not 
understand  that  a  child  even  in  the  most  diffi- 
cult matter  can  give  extremely  important  advice. 
Heavens !  when  one  of  these  lovely  little  birds 
looks  up  at  you,  confiding  and  happy,  it  is  a 
shame  to  deceive  it.  I  call  them  birds  because 
there  is  nothing  better  than  birds  in  the  world. 
To  go  on  with  my  story,  the  people  in  the  village 
were  most  angry  with  me  because  of  one  thing : 
the  schoolmaster  simply  envied  me.  At  first  he 
shook  his  head,  and  wondered  how  the  children 
understood  everything  I  told  them,  and  almost 
nothing  of  what  he  told  them.  Then  he  began 
to  laugh  at  me  when  I  said  to  him  that  we  could 
neither  of  us  teach  them  anything,  but  that  they 
could  teach  us.  And  how  could  he  envy  me  and 
slander  me  when  he  himself  lived  with  children  ? 
Children  heal  the  soul." 

Into  the  character  of  the  hero  of  this  book 
Dostoievsky  has  put  all  the  sweetness  of  his 
nature,  all  his  sympathy  with  the  unfortunate, 
all  his  pity  for  the  sick,  all  his  understanding 
and  love  of  children.  The  character  of  Prince 
Mwishkin  reflects  all  that  is  best  in  Dostoievsky. 
He  is  a  portrait  not  of  what  Dostoievsky  was, 
but  of  what  the  author  would  like  to  have  been. 
It  must  not  for  a  moment  be  thought  that  he 
magined  that  he  fulfilled  this  ideal :  he  was  well 

2IO 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

aware  of  his  faults  :  of  the  sudden  outbursts  and 
the  seething  deeps  of  his  passionate  nature ;  his 
capacity  for  rage,  hatred,  jealousy  and  envy ; 
none  the  less  Dostoievsky  could  not  possibly 
have  created  the  character  of  Prince  Mwishkin, 
the  Idiot,  had  he  not  been  made  of  nauch  the 
same  substance  himself. 

All  through  Dostoievsky's  books,  whenever 
children  are  mentioned  or  appear,  the  pages 
breathe  a  kind  of  freshness  and  fragrance  like 
that  of  lilies-of-the-valley.  Whatever  he  says 
about  children  or  whatever  he  makes  them  say, 
has  the  rare  accent  of  truth.  The  smile  of 
children  lights  up  the  dark  pages  of  his  books, 
like  spring  flowers  growing  at  the  edge  of  a 
dark  abyss. 

In  strong  contrast  to  the  character  of  the 
prince  is  the  merchant  Rogozhin.  He  is  the 
incarnation  of  the  second  type,  that  of  the 
obdurate  spirit,  which  I  have  already  said 
dominates  Dostoievsky's  novels.  He  is,  perhaps, 
less  proud  than  Raskolnikov,  but  he  is  far 
stronger,  more  passionate  and  more  vehement. 
His  imperious  and  unfettered  nature  is  handi- 
capped by  no  weakness  of  nerves,  no  sapping 
self-analysis.  He  is  undisciplined  and  centrifugal. 
He  is  not  "  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of 
thought,"  but  it  is  his  passions  and  not  his  ideas 
which  are  too  great  for  the  vessel  that  contains 

211 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

them.  Rogozhin  loves  Nastasia,  a  hetaira,  who 
has  likewise  unbridled  passions  and  impulses. 
He  loves  her  with  all  the  strength  of  his  violent 
and  undisciplined  nature,  and  he  is  tormented  by 
jealousy  because  she  does  not  love  him,  although 
she  cannot  help  submitting  to  the  influence  of 
his  imperious  personality.  The  jealous  poison 
in  him  takes  so  complete  a  possession  of  his 
body  and  soul  that  he  ultimately  kills  Nastasia 
almost  immediately  after  she  has  married  him 
and  given  herself  to  him,  because  he  feels  that 
she  is  never  his  own,  least  of  all  at  the  moment 
when  she  abandons  herself  to  him  for  ever.  So 
great  is  his  passion,  that  this  woman,  even  while 
hating  him,  cannot  resist  going  to  him  against 
her  will,  knowing  well  that  he  will  kill  her. 

The  description  of  the  night  that  follows  this 
murder,  when  Rogozhin  talks  all  night  with  the 
prince  in  front  of  the  bed  where  Nastasia  is  lying 
dead,  is  by  its  absence  of  melodrama  and  its 
simplicity  perhaps  the  most  icily  terrible  piece  of 
writing  that  Dostoievsky  ever  penned.  The  reason 
why  Nastasia  does  not  love  Rogozhin  is  that  she 
loves  Prince  Mwishkin,  the  Idiot,  and  so  does  the 
third  daughter  of  the  general,  Aglaia,  although  he 
gives  them  nothing  but  pity,  and  never  makes  love 
to  them.  And  here  we  come  to  the  root-idea  and 
the  kernel  of  the  book,  which  is  the  influence 
which    the    Idiot    exercises     on    everybody    with 

212 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

whom  he  comes  in  contact.  Dostoievsky  places 
him  in  a  nest  of  rascals,  scoundrels  and 
villains,  a  world  of  usurers,  liars  and  thieves, 
interested,  worldly,  ambitious  and  shady.  He  not 
only  passes  unscathed  through  all  this  den  of  evil, 
but  the  most  deadly  weapons  of  the  wicked,  their 
astuteness,  their  cunning  and  their  fraud,  are 
utterly  powerless  against  his  very  simplicity,  and 
there  is  not  one  of  these  people,  however  crusted 
with  worldliness,  however  sordid  or  bad,  who  can 
evade  his  magical  influence.  The  women  at  first 
laugh  at  him  ;  but  in  the  end,  as  I  have  already 
said,  he  becomes  a  cardinal  factor  in  the  life  of 
both  Nastasia  the  unbridled  and  passionate  woman, 
and  Aglaia  the  innocent  and  intelligent  girl :  so 
much  so  that  they  end  by  joining  in  a  battle  of 
wild  jealousy  over  him,  although  he  himself  is 
naively  unconscious  of  the  cause  of  their  dispute. 

This  book,  more  than  any  other,  reveals  to  us 
the  methods  and  the  art  of  Dostoievsky.  This 
method  and  this  art  are  not  unlike  those  of 
Charlotte  Bronte.  The  setting  of  the  picture, 
the  accessories,  are  fantastic,  sometimes  to  the 
verge  of  impossibility,  and  this  no  more  matters 
than  the  fantastic  setting  of  Jmie  Eyre  matters. 
All  we  see  and  all  we  feel  is  the  white  flame  of 
light  that  burns  throughout  the  book.  We  no 
more  care  whether  a  man  like  General  Epanchin 
could  or  could  not  have  existed,  or  whether  the 
213 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

circumstances  of  his  life  are  possible  or  impossible, 
than  we  care  whether  the  friends  of  Mr.  Rochester 
are  possible  or  impossible.  Such  things  seem 
utterly  trivial  in  this  book,  where  at  every  moment 
we  are  allowed  to  look  deep  down  into  the  very 
depths  of  human  nature,  to  look  as  it  were  on  the 
spirit  of  man  and  woman  naked  and  unashamed. 
For  though  the  setting  may  be  fantastic  if  not 
impossible,  though  we  may  never  have  seen  such 
people  in  our  lives,  they  are  truer  than  life  in  a 
way :  we  seem  to  see  right  inside  every  one  of 
these  characters  as  though  they  had  been  stripped 
of  everything  which  was  false  and  artificial  about 
them,  as  though  they  were  left  with  nothing  but 
their  bared  souls,  as  they  will  be  at  the  Day  of 
Judgment. 

With  regard  to  the  artistic  construction  of  the 
book,  the  method  is  the  same  as  that  of  most  of 
Dostoievsky's  books.  In  nearly  all  his  works  the 
book  begins  just  before  a  catastrophe  and  occupies 
the  space  of  a  few  days.  And  yet  the  book  is 
very  long.  It  is  entirely  taken  up  by  conver- 
sation and  explanation  of  the  conversation.  There 
are  no  descriptions  of  nature ;  everything  is  in  a 
dialogue.  Directly  one  character  speaks  we  hear 
the  tone  of  his  voice.  There  are  no  "  stage  direc- 
tions." We  are  not  told  that  so  and  so  is  such 
and  such  a  person,  we  feel  it  and  recognise  it 
from  the  very  first  word  he  says.  On  the  other 
214 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

hand,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  analysis,  but  it  is 
never  of  an  unnecessary  kind.  Dostoievsky  never 
nudges  our  elbow,  never  points  out  to  us  things 
which  we  know  already,  but  he  illuminates  with 
a  strong  searchlight  the  deeps  of  the  sombre 
and  tortuous  souls  of  his  characters,  by  showing 
us  what  they  are  themselves  thinking,  but  not 
what  he  thinks  of  them.  His  analysis  resembles 
the  Greek  chorus,  and  his  books  resemble  Greek 
tragedies  in  the  making,  rich  ore  mingled  with 
dark  dross,  granite  and  marble,  the  stuff  out  of 
which  ^schylus  could  have  hewn  another  Aga- 
memnon, or  Shakespeare  have  written  another 
King  Lear. 

The  Idiot  may  not  be  the  most  artistic  of  all 
his  books,  in  the  sense  that  it  is  not  centralised 
and  is  often  diffuse,  which  is  not  the  case  with 
Crime  and  Punishment,  but  it  is  perhaps  the  most 
characteristic,  the  most  personal,  for  none  but 
Dostoievsky  could  have  invented  and  caused  to 
live  such  a  character  as  Prince  Mwishkin,  and 
made  him  positively  radiate  goodness  and  love. 


VII 

The  Possessed 

The  Possessed,  or  Devils,  which   is   the   literal 
translation  of  the  Russian  title,  is  perhaps  inferior 
215 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

to  Dostoievsky's  other  work  as  a  whole,  but  in 
one  sense  it  is  the  most  interesting  book  which 
he  ever  wrote.  There  are  two  reasons  for  this : 
in  the  first  place,  his  qualities  and  his  defects  as  a 
writer  are  seen  in  this  book  intensified,  under  a 
magnifying  glass  as  it  were,  at  their  extremes,  so 
that  it  both  gives  you  an  idea  of  the  furthest 
range  of  his  powers,  and  shows  you  most  clearly 
the  limitations  of  his  genius.  Stevenson  points 
out  somewhere  that  this  is  the  case  with  Victor 
Hugo's  least  successful  novels.  In  the  second 
place,  the  book  was  far  in  advance  of  its  time. 
In  it  Dostoievsky  shows  that  he  possessed  "  a 
prophetic  soul." 

The  book  deals  with  the  Nihilists  who  played  a 
prominent  part  in  the  sixties.  The  explanation  of 
the  title  is  to  be  found  in  a  quotation  from  the 
8th  chapter  of  St.  Luke's  Gospel. 

"  And  there  was  there  an  herd  of  many  swine 
feeding  on  the  mountain ;  and  they  besought  Him 
that  He  would  suffer  them  to  enter  into  them. 
And  He  suffered  them.  Then  went  the  devils  out 
of  the  man  and  entered  into  the  swine :  and  the 
herd  ran  violently  down  a  steep  place  into  the 
lake  and  were  choked.  When  they  that  fed  them 
saw  what  was  done,  they  fled,  and  went  and  told 
it  in  the  city  and  in  the  country. 

"  Then  they  went  out  to  see  what  was  done ; 
and  came  to  Jesus,  and  found  the  man  out  of 
216 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

whom  the  devils  were  departed,  sitting  at  the  feet 
of  Jesus,  clothed,  and  in  his  right  mind  ;  and  they 
were  afraid.  They  also  which  saw  it,  told  them 
by  what  means  he  that  was  possessed  of  the 
devils,  was  healed." 

The  book,  as  I  have  said,  undoubtedly  reveals 
Dostoievsky's  powers  at  their  highest  pitch,  in  the 
sense  that  nowhere  in  the  whole  range  of  his 
work  do  we  find  such  isolated  scenes  of  power ; 
scenes  which  are,  so  to  speak,  white  hot  with  the 
fire  of  his  soul ;  and  characters  in  which  he  has 
concentrated  the  whole  daemonic  force  of  his  per- 
sonality, and  the  whole  blinding  strength  of  his 
insight.  On  the  other  hand,  it  shows  us,  as  I 
added,  more  clearly  than  any  other  of  his 
books,  the  nature  and  the  extent  of  his  limitations. 
It  is  almost  too  full  of  characters  and  incidents ; 
the  incidents  are  crowded  together  in  an  incred- 
ibly short  space  of  time,  the  whole  action  of  the 
book,  which  is  a  remarkably  long  one,  occupying 
only  the  space  of  a  few  days,  while  to  the  descrip- 
tion of  one  morning  enough  space  is  allotted  to 
make  a  bulky  English  novel.  Again,  the  narrative 
is  somewhat  disconnected.  You  can  sometimes 
scarcely  see  the  wood  for  the  trees.  Of  course, 
these  objections  are  in  a  sense  hypercritical, 
because,  as  far  as  my  experience  goes,  any  one 
who  takes  up  this  book  finds  it  impossible  to  put 
it  down  until  he  has  read  it  to  the  very  end,  so 
217 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

enthralling  is  the  mere  interest  of  the  story,  so 
powerful  the  grip  of  the  characters.  I  therefore 
only  suggest  these  criticisms  for  those  who  wish 
to  form  an  idea  of  the  net  result  of  Dostoievsky's 
artistic  scope  and  achievement. 

With  regard  to  the  further  point,  the  "  prophetic 
soul "  which  speaks  in  this  book  is  perhaps  that 
which  is  its  most  remarkable  quality.  The  book 
was  some  thirty  years  ahead  of  its  time :  ahead 
of  its  time  in  the  same  way  that  Wagner's  music 
was  ahead  of  its  time, — and  this  was  not  only  on 
account  of  the  characters  and  the  state  of  things 
which  it  divined  and  foreshadowed,  but  also  on 
account  of  the  ideas  and  the  flashes  of  philosophy 
which  abound  in  its  pages.  When  the  book  was 
published,  it  was  treated  as  a  gross  caricature,  and 
even  a  few  years  ago,  when  Professor  Bruckner 
first  published  his  History  of  Russian  Litera- 
tm'e^  he  talked  of  this  book  as  being  a  satire 
not  of  Nihilism  itself,  but  of  the  hangers-on,  the 
camp-followers  which  accompany  every  army. 
"  Dostoievsky,"  he  says,  "  did  not  paint  the  heroes 
but  the  Falstaffs,  the  silly  adepts,  the  half  and 
wholly  crazed  adherents  of  Nihilism.  He  was 
indeed  fully  within  his  rights.  Of  course  there 
were  such  Nihilists,  particularly  between  1862 
and  1869,  but  there  were  not  only  such:  even 
Nechaev,  the  prototype  of  Petrushka,  impressed 
us  by  a  steel-like  energy  and  a  hatred  for  the 
218 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

upper  classes  which  we  wholly  miss  in  the  wind- 
bag and  intriguer  Petrushka." 

There  is  a  certain  amount  of  truth  in  this 
criticism.  It  is  true  that  Dostoievsky  certainly 
painted  the  Falstafifs  and  the  half-crazy  adherents 
of  Nihilism.  But  I  am  convinced  that  the  reason 
he  did  not  paint  the  heroes  was  that  he  did  not 
believe  in  their  existence :  he  did  not  believe  that 
the  heroes  of  Nihilism  were  heroes  ;  this  is  plain 
not  only  from  this  book,  but  from  every  line  which 
he  wrote  about  the  people  who  played  a  part  in  the 
revolutionary  movement  in  Russia ;  and  so  far 
from  the  leading  personage  in  his  book  being 
merely  a  wind-bag,  I  would  say  that  one  is 
almost  more  impressed  by  the  steel-like  energy  of 
the  character,  as  drawn  in  this  book,  than  by  the 
sayings  and  doings  of  his  prototype — or  rather 
his  prototypes  in  real  life.  The  amazing  thing 
is  that  even  if  a  few  years  ago  real  life  had  not 
furnished  examples  of  revolutionaries  as  extreme 
both  in  their  energy  and  in  their  craziness  as 
Dostoievsky  paints  them,  real  life  has  done  so  in 
the  last  four  years.  Therefore,  Dostoievsky  not 
only  saw  with  prophetic  divination  that  should 
circumstances  in  Russia  ever  lead  to  a  general  up- 
heaval, such  characters  might  arise  and  exercise 
an  influence,  but  his  prophetic  insight  has  actually 
been  justified  by  the  facts. 

As  soon  as  such  circumstances  arose,  as 
219 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

they  did  after  the  Japanese  War  of  1 904,  char- 
acters such  as  Dostoievsky  depicted  immediately 
came  to  the  front  and  played  a  leading  part. 
When  M.  de  Vogiie  published  his  book,  La  Roman 
Russe^  in  speaking  of  The  Possessed,  he  said  that 
he  had  assisted  at  several  of  the  trials  of 
Anarchists  in  1871,  and  he  added  that  many  of 
the  men  who  came  up  for  trial,  and  many  of  the 
crimes  of  which  they  were  accused,  were  identical 
reproductions  of  the  men  and  the  crimes  imagined 
by  the  novelist.  If  this  was  true  when  applied 
to  the  revolutionaries  of  187  i,  it  is  a  great  deal 
truer  applied  to  those  of  1904—1909.  That 
Dostoievsky  believed  that  this  would  happen,  I 
think  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Witness  the 
following  passage : 

"  Chigalev,"  says  the  leading  character  of  The 
Possessed,  speaking  of  one  of  his  revolutionary 
disciples,  a  man  with  long  ears,  "  is  a  man  of 
genius :  a  genius  in  the  manner  of  Fourier,  but 
bolder  and  cleverer.  He  has  invented  '  equality.' 
In  his  system,  every  member  of  society  has  an 
eye  on  every  one  else.  To  tell  tales  is  a  duty. 
The  individual  belongs  to  the  community  and  the 
community  belongs  to  the  individual.  All  are 
slaves  and  equal  in  their  bondage.  Calumny  and 
assassination  can  be  used  in  extreme  cases,  but 
the  most  important  thing  is  equality.  The  first 
necessity  is  to  lower  the  level  of  culture  science 
220 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

and  talent.  A  high  scientific  level  is  only 
accessible  to  superior  intellects,  and  we  don't  want 
superior  intellects.  Men  gifted  with  high  capaci- 
ties have  always  seized  upon  power  and  become 
despots.  Highly  gifted  men  cannot  help  being 
despots,  and  have  always  done  more  harm  than 
good.  They  must  be  exiled  or  executed. 
Cicero's  tongue  must  be  cut  out,  Copernicus'  eyes 
must  be  blinded,  Shakespeare  must  be  stoned. 
That  is  Chigalevism.  Slaves  must  be  equal. 
Without  despotism,  up  to  the  present  time,  neither 
liberty  nor  equality  has  existed,  but  in  a  herd, 
equality  should  reign  supreme, — and  that  is 
Chigalevism.  ...  I  am  all  for  Chigalevism. 
Down  with  instruction  and  science !  There  is 
enough  of  it,  as  it  is,  to  last  thousands  of  years, 
but  we  must  organise  obedience :  it  is  the  only 
thing  which  is  wanting  in  the  world.  The  desire 
for  culture  is  an  aristocratic  desire.  As  soon  as 
you  admit  the  idea  of  the  family  or  of  love,  you 
will  have  the  desire  for  personal  property.  We 
will  annihilate  this  desire :  we  will  let  loose 
drunkenness,  slander,  tale-telling,  and  unheard-of 
debauchery.  We  will  strangle  every  genius  in  his 
cradle.  We  will  reduce  everything  to  the  same 
denomination,  complete  equality.  '  We  have 
learnt  a  trade,  and  we  are  honest  men  :  we  need 
nothing  else.'  Such  was  the  answer  which  some 
English    workman    made    the    other    day.     The 

221 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

indispensable  alone  is  indispensable.  Such  will 
thenceforth  be  the  watchword  of  the  world,  but 
we  must  have  upheavals.  We  will  see  to  that, 
we  the  governing  class.  The  slaves  must  have 
leaders.  Complete  obedience,  absolute  imperson- 
ality, but  once  every  thirty  years  Chigalev  will 
bring  about  an  upheaval,  and  men  will  begin  to 
devour  each  other :  always  up  to  a  given  point,  so 
that  we  may  not  be  bored.  Boredom  is  an 
aristocratic  sensation,  and  in  Chigalevism  there 
will  be  no  desires.  We  will  reserve  for  ourselves 
desire  and  suffering,  and  for  the  slaves  there  will 
be  Chigalevism.  .  .  .  We  will  begin  by  ferment- 
ing disorder  ;  we  will  reach  the  people  itself.  Do 
you  know  that  we  are  already  terribly  strong  ? 
those  who  belong  to  us  are  not  only  the  men  who 
murder  and  set  fire,  who  commit  injuries  after  the 
approved  fashion,  and  who  bite :  these  people  are 
only  in  the  way.  I  do  not  understand  anything 
unless  there  be  discipline.  I  myself  am  a 
scoundrel,  but  I  am  not  a  Socialist.  Ha,  ha ! 
listen !  I  have  counted  them  all :  the  teacher 
who  laughs  with  the  children  whom  he  teaches, 
at  their  God  and  at  their  cradle,  belongs  to  us ; 
the  barrister  who  defends  a  well-educated  assassin 
by  proving  that  he  is  more  educated  than  his 
victims,  and  that  in  order  to  get  money  he  was 
obliged  to  kill,  belongs  to  us ;  the  schoolboy 
who  in  order  to  experience  a  sharp  sensation  kills 

222 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

a  peasant,  belongs  to  us  ;  the  juries  who  systema- 
tically acquit  all  criminals,  belong  to  us ;  the 
judge  who  at  the  tribunal  is  afraid  of  not  showing 
himself  to  be  sufficiently  liberal,  belongs  to  us ; 
among  the  administrators,  among  the  men  of 
letters,  a  great  number  belong  to  us,  and  they  do 
not  know  it  themselves.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  obedience  of  schoolboys  and  fools  has 
reached  its  zenith.  Everywhere  you  see  an 
immeasurable  vanity,  and  bestial,  unheard-of 
appetites.  Do  you  know  how  much  we  owe  to 
the  theories  in  vogue  at  present  alone?  When  I 
left  Russia,  Littre's  thesis,  which  likens  crime  to 
madness,  was  the  rage.  I  return,  and  crime  is 
already  no  longer  considered  even  as  madness :  it 
is  considered  as  common  sense  itself,  almost  a  duty, 
at  least  a  noble  protest.  *  Why  should  not  an 
enlightened  man  kill  if  he  has  need  of  money  ?  ' 
Such  is  the  argument  you  hear.  But  that  is 
nothing.  The  Russian  God  has  ceded  his  place 
to  drink.  The  people  are  drunk,  the  mothers  are 
drunk,  the  children  are  drunk,  the  churches  are 
empty.  Oh,  let  this  generation  grow  :  it  is  a  pity 
we  cannot  wait.  They  would  be  drunk  still. 
Ah,  what  a  pity  that  we  have  no  proletariat ! 
But  it  will  come,  it  will  come.  The  moment  is 
drawing  near." 

In    this    declaration     of    revolutionary     faith, 
Dostoievsky    has    concentrated    the  whole  of  an 
223 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

ideal  on  which  thousands  of  ignorant  men  in 
Russia  have  acted  during  the  last  three  years. 
All  of  the  so-called  Hooliganism  which  came 
about  in  Russia  after  the  war,  which  although 
it  has  greatly  diminished  has  by  no  means 
yet  been  exterminated  by  a  wholesale  system  of 
military  court-martials,  proceeds  from  this,  and 
its  adepts  are  conscious  or  unconscious  disciples 
of  this  creed.  For  the  proletariat  which  Dostoi- 
evsky foresaw  is  now  a  living  fact,  and  a  great 
part  of  it  has  been  saturated  with  such  ideas. 
Not  all  of  it,  of  course.  I  do  not  for  a  mo- 
ment mean  to  say  that  every  ordinary  Russian 
social-democrat  fosters  such  ideas ;  but  what 
I  do  mean  to  say  is  that  these  ideas  exist,  and 
that  a  great  number  of  men  have  acted  on  a 
similar  creed  which  they  have  only  half  digested, 
and  have  sunk  into  ruin,  ruining  others  in  doing 
so,  and  have  ended  by  being  hanged. 

Thus  the  book,  Devils,  which,  when  it 
appeared  in  1871,  was  thought  a  piece  of  gross 
exaggeration,  and  which  had  not  been  out  long 
before  events  began  to  show  that  it  was  less 
exaggerated  than  it  appeared  at  first  sight — has 
in  the  last  three  years,  and  even  in  this  year  of 
grace,  received  further  justification  by  events  such 
as  the  role  that  Father  Gapon  played  in  the 
revolutionary  movement,  and  the  revelations 
which  have  been  lately  made  with  regard  to 
224 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

Azev  and  similar  characters.  Any  one  who  finds 
difficulty  in  believing  a  story  such  as  that  which 
came  to  light  through  the  Azev  revelations,  had 
better  read  The  Possessed.  It  will  throw  an 
illuminating  light  on  the  motives  that  cause  such 
men  to  act  as  they  do,  and  the  circumstances 
that  produce  such  men. 

The  main  idea  of  the  book  is  to  show  that  the 
whole  strength  of  what  were  then  the  Nihilists 
and  what  are  now  the  Revolutionaries, — let  us  say 
the  Maximalists, — lies,  not  in  lofty  dogmas  and 
theories  held  by  a  vast  and  splendidly  organised 
community,  but  simply  in  the  strength  of  char- 
acter of  one  or  two  men,  and  in  the  peculiar 
weakness  of  the  common  herd.  I  say  the  peculiar 
weakness  with  intention.  It  does  not  follow 
that  the  common  herd,  to  which  the  majority 
of  the  revolutionary  disciples  belong,  is  neces- 
sarily altogether  weak,  but  that  though  the  men 
of  whom  it  is  composed  may  be  strong  and 
clever  in  a  thousand  ways,  they  have  one  peculiar 
weakness,  which  is,  indeed,  a  common  weakness 
of  the  Russian  character.  But  before  going 
into  this  question,  it  is  advisable  first  to  say 
that  what  Dostoievsky  shows  in  his  book.  The 
Possessed,  is  that  these  Nihilists  are  almost 
entirely  devoid  of  ideas ;  the  organisations 
round  which  so  many  legends  gather,  consist 
in  reality  of  only  a  few  local  clubs, — in  this 
P  225 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

particular  case,  of  one  local  club.  All  the  talk 
of  central  committees,  executive  committees,  and 
so  forth,  existed  only  in  the  imagination  of  the 
leaders.  On  the  other  hand,  the  character  of 
those  few  men  who  were  the  leaders  and  who 
dominated  their  disciples,  was  as  strong  as  steel 
and  as  cold  as  ice.  And  what  Dostoievsky 
shows  is  how  this  peculiar  strength  of  the  leaders 
exercised  itself  on  the  peculiar  weakness  of  the 
disciples.  Let  us  now  turn  to  the  peculiar  nature 
of  this  weakness.  Dostoievsky  explains  it  at  the 
very  beginning  of  the  book.  In  describing  one 
of  the  characters,  Chatov,  who  is  an  unwilling 
disciple  of  the  Nihilist  leaders,  he  says  : 

"  He  is  one  of  those  Russian  Idealists  whom 
any  strong  idea  strikes  all  of  a  sudden,  and  on 
the  spot  annihilates  his  will,  sometimes  for  ever. 
They  are  never  able  to  react  against  the  idea. 
They  believe  in  it  passionately,  and  the  rest  of 
their  life  passes  as  though  they  were  writhing 
under  a  stone  which  was  crushing  them." 

The  leading  figure  of  the  book  is  one  Peter 
Verkhovensky,  a  political  agitator.  He  is  un- 
scrupulous, ingenious,  and  plausible  in  the  highest 
degree,  as  clever  as  a  fiend,  a  complete  egotist, 
boundlessly  ambitious,  untroubled  by  conscience, 
and  as  hard  as  steel.  His  prototype  was  Nachaef, 
an  actual  Nihilist.  The  ambition  of  this  man 
is  to  create  disorder,  and  disorder  once  created, 
226 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

to  seize  the  authority  which  must  ultimately 
arise  out  of  any  disorder.  His  means  of  effecting 
this  is  as  ingenious  as  Chichikov's  method  of 
disposing  of  "  dead  souls  "  in  Gogol's  masterpiece. 
By  imagining  a  central  committee,  of  which  he  is 
the  representative,  he  organises  a  small  local 
committee,  consisting  of  five  men  called  "  the 
Fiver " ;  and  he  persuades  his  dupes  that  a  net- 
work of  similar  small  committees  exists  all  over 
Russia.  He  aims  at  getting  the  local  committee 
entirely  into  his  hands,  and  making  the  members 
of  it  absolute  slaves  to  his  will.  His  ultimate 
aim  is  to  create  similar  committees  -all  over  the 
country,  persuading  people  in  every  new  place  that 
the  network  is  ready  everywhere  else,  and  that  they 
are  all  working  in  complete  harmony  and  in  absolute 
obedience  to  a  central  committee,  which  is  some- 
where abroad,  and  which  in  reality  does  not  exist. 
This  once  accomplished,  his  idea  is  to  create  dis- 
order among  the  peasants  or  the  masses,  and  in  the 
general  upheaval  to  seize  the  power.  It  is  possible 
that  I  am  defining  his  aim  too  closely,  since  in 
the  book  one  only  sees  his  work,  so  far  as  one 
local  committee  is  concerned.  But  it  is  clear 
from  his  character  that  he  has  some  big  idea 
at  the  back  of  his  head.  He  is  not  merely 
dabbling  with  excitement  in  a  small  local  sphere, 
for  all  the  other  characters  in  the  book,  however 
much  they  hate  him,  are  agreed  about  one  thing ; 
227 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

that  in  his  cold  and  self-seeking  character  there 
lies  an  element  of  sheer  enthusiasm.  The  manner 
in  which  he  creates  disciples  out  of  his  immediate 
surroundings,  and  obtains  an  unbounded  influence 
over  them,  is  by  playing  on  the  peculiar  weak- 
ness which  I  have  already  quoted  as  being  the 
characteristic  of  Chigalevism.  He  plays  on  the 
one-sidedness  of  the  Russian  character  ;  he  plays 
on  the  fact  that  directly  one  single  idea  takes 
possession  of  the  brain  of  a  certain  kind  of 
Russian  idealist,  as  in  the  case  of  Chatov,  or 
Raskolnikov,  for  instance,  he  is  no  longer  able  to 
control  it.  Peter  works  on  this.  He  also  works 
on  the  vanity  of  his  disciples,  and  on  their  fear  of 
not  being  thought  advanced  enough. 

"  The  principal  strength,"  he  says  on  one 
occasion,  "  the  cement  which  binds  everything, 
is  the  fear  of  public  opinion,  the  fear  of  having  an 
opinion  of  one's  own.  It  is  with  just  such  people 
that  success  is  possible.  I  tell  you  they  would 
throw  themselves  into  the  fire  if  I  told  them  to 
do  so,  if  I  ordered  it.  I  would  only  have  to  say 
that  they  were  bad  Liberals.  I  have  been  blamed 
for  having  deceived  my  associates  here  in  speak- 
ing of  a  central  committee  and  of  '  innumerable 
ramifications.'  But  where  is  the  deception  ?  The 
central  committee  is  you  and  me.  As  to  the 
ramifications,  I  can  have  as  many  as  you 
wish." 

228 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

But  as  Peter's  plans  advance,  this  cement,  con- 
sisting of  vanity  and  the  fear  of  public  opinion, 
is  not  sufficient  for  him ;  he  wants  a  stronger 
bond  to  bind  his  disciples  together,  and  to  keep 
them  under  his  own  immediate  and  exclusive 
control ;  and  such  a  bond  must  be  one  of  blood. 
He  therefore  persuades  his  committee  that  one  of 
their  members,  Chatov,  to  whom  I  have  already 
alluded,  is  a  spy.  This  is  easy,  because  Chatov  is 
a  member  of  the  organisation  against  his  will. 
He  became  involved  in  the  business  when  he  was 
abroad,  in  Switzerland  ;  and  on  the  first  possible 
occasion  he  says  he  will  have  nothing  to  do  with 
any  Nihilist  propaganda,  since  he  is  absolutely 
opposed  to  it,  being  a  convinced  Slavophil  and  a 
hater  of  all  acts  of  violence.  Peter  lays  a  trap  for 
him.  At  a  meeting  of  the  committee  he  asks  every 
one  of  those  present  whether,  should  they  be  aware 
that  a  political  assassination  were  about  to  take 
place, they  would  denounce  the  man  who  was  to  per- 
form it.  With  one  exception  all  answer  no,  that 
they  would  denounce  an  ordinary  assassin,  but  that 
political  assassination  is  not  murder.  When  the 
question  is  put  to  Chatov  he  refuses  to  answer. 
Peter  tells  the  others  that  this  is  the  proof  that 
he  is  a  spy,  and  that  he  must  be  made  away  with. 
His  object  is  that  they  should  kill  Chatov,  and 
thenceforth  be  bound  to  him  by  fear  of  each 
other  and  of  him.  He  has  a  further  plan  for 
229 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

attributing  the  guilt  of  Chatov's  murder  to 
another  man.  He  has  come  across  an  engineer 
named  Kirilov.  This  man  is  also  possessed  by 
one  idea,  in  the  same  manner  as  Raskolnikov  and 
Chatov,  only  that,  unlike  them,  his  character  is 
strong.  His  idea  is  practically  that  enunciated 
many  years  later  by  Nietzsche,  that  of  the  Super- 
man. Kirilov  is  a  maniac :  the  single  idea  which 
in  his  case  has  taken  possession  of  him  is  that  of 
suicide.  There  are  two  prejudices,  he  reasons, 
which  prevent  man  committing  suicide.  One  of 
them  is  insignificant,  the  other  very  serious,  but 
the  insignificant  reason  is  not  without  considerable 
importance :  it  is  the  fear  of  pain.  In  exposing 
his  idea  he  argues  that  were  a  stone  the  size  of 
a  six-storied  house  to  be  suspended  over  a  man, 
he  would  know  that  the  fall  of  the  stone  would 
cause  him  no  pain,  yet  he  would  instinctively  dread 
its  fall,  as  causing  extreme  pain.  As  long  as  that 
stone  remained  suspended  over  him,  he  would  be 
in  terror  lest  it  should  cause  him  pain  by  its  fall, 
and  no  one,  not  even  the  most  scientific  of  men, 
could  escape  this  impression.  Complete  liberty 
will  come  about  only  when  it  will  be  immaterial 
to  man  whether  he  lives  or  not :  that  is  the  aim. 
The  second  cause  and  the  most  serious  one 
that  prevents  men  from  committing  suicide,  is  the 
idea  of  another  world.  For  the  sake  of  clearness 
I  will  here  quote  Kirilov's  conversation  on  this 
230 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

subject  with  the  narrator  of  the  story,  which  is 
told  in  the  first  person  : 

"...  That  is  to  say,  punishment  ? "  says  his 
interlocutor. 

"No,  that  is  nothing  —  simply  the  idea  of 
another  world." 

"  Are  there  not  atheists  who  already  disbelieve 
in  another  world  ?  " 

Kirilov  was  silent. 

"  You  perhaps  judge  by  yourself." 

"  Every  man  can  judge  only  by  himself,"  said 
Kirilov,  blushing.  "  Complete  liberty  will  come 
about  when  it  will  be  entirely  immaterial  to  man 
whether  he  lives  or  whether  he  dies  :  that  is  the 
aim  of  everything." 

"  The  aim  ?  Then  nobody  will  be  able  or  will 
wish  to  live." 

"  Nobody,"  he  answered. 

"  Man  fears  death,  and  therefore  loves  life,"  I 
remarked.  "  That  is  how  I  understand  the 
matter,  and  thus  has   Nature  ordained." 

"  That  is  a  base  idea,  and  therein  lies  the  whole 
imposture.  Life  is  suffering,  Hfe  is  fear,  and  man 
is  unhappy.  Everything  now  is  in  pain  and  terror. 
Man  loves  life  now,  because  he  loves  pain  and 
terror.  Thus  has  he  been  made.  Man  gives  his 
life  now  for  pain  and  fear,  and  therein  lies  the 
whole  imposture.  Man  is  not  at  present  what  he 
ought  to  be.  A  new  man  will  rise,  happy  and 
231 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

proud,  to  whom  it  will  be  immaterial  whether  he 
lives  or  dies.  That  will  be  the  new  man.  He 
who  vanquishes  pain  and  fear,  he  will  be  God,  and 
the  other  gods  will  no  longer  exist." 

"  Then,  according  to  you,  the  other  God  does 
exist  ? " 

"  He  exists  without  existing.  In  the  stone 
there  is  no  pain,  but  in  the  fear  of  the  stone  there 
is  pain.  God  is  the  pain  which  arises  from  the 
fear  of  death.  He  who  vanquishes  the  pain  and 
the  fear,  he  will  be  God.  Then  there  will  be  a 
new  life,  a  new  man,  everything  new.  Then 
history  will  be  divided  into  two  parts.  From  the 
gorilla  to  the  destruction  of  God,  and  from  the 
destruction  of  God  to  .   .  ." 

"  To  the  gorilla  .   .   .  ?  " 

"  To  the  physical  transformation  of  man  and 
of  the  world.  Man  will  be  God,  and  will  be 
transformed  physically." 

"  How  do  you  think  man  will  be  transformed 
physically?" 

"  The  transformation  will  take  place  in  the 
world,  in  thought,  sentiments,  and  actions." 

"  If  it  will  be  immaterial  to  men  whether  they  live 
or  die,  then  men  will  all  kill  each  other.  That 
is  perhaps  the  form  the  transformation  will  take  ?  " 

"  That  is  immaterial.  The  imposture  will  be 
destroyed.  He  who  desires  to  attain  complete 
freedom  must  not  be  afraid  of  killing  himself. 
232 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

He  who  dares  to  kill  himself,  has  discovered  where 
the  error  lies.  There  is  no  greater  liberty  than 
this :  this  is  the  end  of  all  things,  and  you  cannot 
go  further.  He  who  dares  to  kill  himself  is  God. 
It  is  at  present  in  every  one's  power  to  bring  this 
about :  that  God  shall  be  no  more,  and  that 
nothing  shall  exist  any  more.  But  nobody  has 
yet  done  this." 

"  There  have  been  millions  of  suicides," 
"But  they  have  never  been  inspired  with  this 
idea.  They  have  always  killed  themselves  out  of 
fear,  and  never  in  order  to  kill  fear.  He  who  will 
kill  himself  simply  in  order  to  kill  fear,  he  will  be 
God." 

In  this  last  sentence  we  have  the  whole  idea 
and  philosophy  of  Kirilov.  He  had  made  up 
his  mind  to  kill  himself,  in  order  to  prove  that  he 
was  not  afraid  of  death,  and  he  was  possessed 
by  that  idea,  and  by  that  idea  alone.  In  another 
place  he  says  that  man  is  unhappy  because  he 
does  not  know  that  he  is  happy :  simply  for  this 
reason  :  that  is  all.  "  He  who  knows  that  he  is 
happy  will  become  happy  at  once,  immediately." 
And  further  on  he  says :  "  Men  are  not  good, 
simply  because  they  do  not  know  they  are  good. 
When  they  realise  this,  they  will  no  longer 
commit  crimes.  They  must  learn  that  they  are 
good,  and  instantly  they  will  become  good,  one 
and  all  of  them.  He  who  will  teach  men  that 
233 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

they  are  good,  will  end  the  world."  The  man  to 
whom  he  is  talking  objects  that  He  who  taught 
men  that  they  were  good  was  crucified. 

"  The    man  will  come,"   Kirilov  replies,    "  and 
his  name  will  be  the  Man-God." 

"  The  God-Man  ?  "  says  his  interlocutor. 
"  No,  the  Man-God, — there  is  a  difference." 
Here  we  have  his  idea  of  the  Superman.^ 
As  soon  as  Peter  discovers  Kirilov's  obsession, 
he  extracts  from  him  a  promise  that,  as  he  has 
determined  to  commit  suicide,  and  that  as  it  is 
quite  indifferent  to  him  how  and  when  he  does  it, 
he  shall  do  it  when  it  is  useful  to  him,  Peter. 
Kirilov  consents  to  this,  although  he  feels  himself 
in  no  way  bound  to  Peter,  and  although  he  sees 
through  him  entirely  and  completely,  and  would 
hate  him  were  his  contempt  not  too  great  for 
hatred.  But  Peter's  most  ambitious  plans  do  not 
consist  merely  in  binding  five  men  to  him  by  an 
indissoluble  bond  of  blood :  that  is  only  the 
means  to  an  end.  The  end,  as  I  have  already 
said,  is  vaguely  to  get  power ;  and  besides  the  five 
men  whom  he  intends  to  make  his  slaves  for  life, 
Peter  has  another  and  far  more  important  trump 
card.  This  trump  card  consists  of  a  man,  Nicholas 
Stavrogin,  who  is  the  hero  of  the  book.  He  is  the 
only  son  of  a  widow  with  a  landed  estate,  and  after 

^  It  is  characteristic  that  Dostoievsky  puts  the  idea  of  the  '*  Super- 
man "  into  the  mouth  of  a  monomaniac. 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

being  brought  up  by  Peter's  father,  an  old,  harm- 
less and   kindly  Radical,  he  is  sent  to  school  at 
the  age  of  sixteen,  and    later  on    goes  into  the 
army,  receiving  a  commission  in  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  of  the  Guards  regiments  in  St.  Petersburg. 
No  sooner  does  he  get  to  St.  Petersburg,  than  he 
distinguishes  himself  by  savage  eccentricities.     He 
is  what  the   Russians  call  a  skandalist.      He  is  a 
good-looking  young  man  of  Herculean  strength, 
and  quiet,  pleasant  manners,  who  every  now  and 
then  gives  way  to  the  wildest  caprices,  the  most 
extravagant  and  astounding  whims,  when  he  seems 
to  lose  all  control  over  himself.     For  a  time  he 
leads  the  kind  of  life  led  by  Prince  Harry  with 
Falstaff,  and  his  extravagances  are  the  subject  of 
much  talk.      He  drives  over  people  in  his  carriage, 
and    publicly    insults    a    lady    of    high    position. 
Finally,  he    takes    part    in    two   duels.      In   both 
cases  he  is  the  aggressor.     One  of  his  adversaries 
is  killed,  and  the   other  severely  wounded.      On 
account  of  this  he  is  court-martialled,  degraded  to 
the  ranks,  and  has  to  serve  as  a  common  soldier 
in  an  infantry  regiment.    But  in    1863  he  has  an 
opportunity  of  distinguishing  himself,  and  after  a 
time  his   military  rank   is  given   back  to  him.      It 
is  then  that   he    returns   to  the  provincial   town, 
where  the  whole  of  the  events  told   in  the  book 
take  place,  and  plays  a  part  in  Peter's  organisation. 
Peter  regards  him,  as   I   have  said,  as  his  trump 
235 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

card,  because  of  the  strength  of  his  character. 
He  is  one  of  those  people  who  represent  the 
extreme  Lucifer  quality  of  the  Russian  nature. 
He  is  proud  and  inflexible,  without  any  trace  of 
weakness.  There  is  nothing  in  the  world  he 
is  afraid  of,  and  there  is  nothing  he  will  not 
do  if  he  wishes  to  do  it.  He  will  commit 
the  wildest  follies,  the  most  outrageous  extrava- 
gances, but  as  it  were  deliberately^  and  not  as 
if  he  were  carried  away  by  the  impetuosity  of 
his  temperament.  On  the  contrary,  he  seems 
throughout  to  be  as  cold  as  ice,  and  eternally 
unruffled  and  cool ;  and  he  is  capable  when  he 
chooses  of  showing  a  self-control  as  astonishing 
and  remarkable  as  his  outbursts  of  violence.  Peter 
knows  very  well  that  he  cannot  hope  to  influence 
such  a  man.  Stavrogin  sees  through  Peter  and 
despises  him.  At  the  same  time,  Peter  hopes  to 
entangle  him  in  his  scheme,  as  he  entangles  the 
others,  and  thinks  that,  this  once  done,  a  man 
with  Stavrogin's  character  cannot  help  being  his 
principal  asset.  It  is  on  this  very  character, 
however,  that  the  whole  of  Peter's  schemes  break 
down.  Stavrogin  has  married  a  lame,  half-witted 
girl ;  the  marriage  is  kept  secret,  and  he  loves  and 
is  loved  by  an  extremely  beautiful  girl  called  Lisa. 
Peter  conceives  the  idea  of  getting  a  tramp,  an 
ex-convict  who  is  capable  of  everything,  to  murder 
Stavrogin's  wife  and  the  drunken  brother  with 
236 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

whom  she  lives,  and  to  set  fire  to  a  part  of  the 
town  and  the  house  where  the  two  are  living. 
He  hopes  that  Stavrogin  will  marry  Lisa,  and 
then  not  be  able  to  withdraw  from  his  organisa- 
tion for  fear  of  being  held  responsible  for  the 
murder  of  his  wife. 

Stavrogin  sees  through  the  whole  scheme.  He 
announces  his  marriage  publicly ;  but  this  act, 
instead  of  alienating  Lisa  from  him,  increases  her 
passion.  Nevertheless  Stavrogin's  wife  and  her 
brother  are  murdered,  and  a  large  quarter  of  the 
town  is  burned.  When  Lisa  asks  Stavrogin  if  he 
is  in  any  way  connected  with  this  murder,  he 
replies  that  he  was  opposed  to  it,  but  that  he  had 
guessed  that  they  would  be  murdered,  and  that  he 
had  taken  no  steps  to  prevent  it.  Lisa  herself  is 
killed,  almost  by  accident,  on  the  scene  of  the 
murder  of  Stavrogin's  wife.  She  is  killed  by  an 
excited  man  in  the  crowd,  who  holds  her  respon- 
sible for  the  deed,  and  thinks  that  she  has  come 
to  gloat  over  her  victims.  After  this  Stavrogin 
washes  his  hands  of  the  whole  business,  and  leaves 
the  town.  It  is  then  that  Peter  carries  out  the 
rest  of  his  plans.  Chatov  is  murdered,  and  Peter 
calls  upon  Kirilov  to  fulfil  his  promise  and  commit 
suicide.  He  wishes  him,  before  committing  the 
act,  to  write  a  paper  in  which  he  shall  state  that 
he  has  disseminated  revolutionary  pamphlets  and 
proclamations,  and  that  he  has  employed  the 
237 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

ex-convict  who  committed  the  murders.  He  is 
also  to  add  that  he  has  killed  Chatov  on  account 
of  his  betrayal.  But  Kirilov  has  not  known  until 
this  moment  that  Chatov  is  dead,  and  he  refuses 
to  say  a  word  about  him.  Then  begins  a  duel 
between  these  two  men  in  the  night,  which 
is  the  most  exciting  chapter  in  the  book,  and 
perhaps  one  of  the  most  exciting  and  terrifying 
things  ever  written.  Peter  is  in  terror  lest  Kirilov 
should  fail  him,  and  Kirilov  is  determined  not 
to  be  a  party  to  Peter's  baseness.  Peter  plays 
upon  his  vanity,  and  by  subtle  taunts  excites  to 
a  frenzy  the  man's  monomania,  till  at  last  he 
consents  to  sign  the  paper.  Then  snatching  a 
revolver  he  goes  into  the  next  room.  Peter  waits, 
not  knowing  what  is  going  to  happen.  Ten 
minutes  pass,  and  Peter,  consumed  by  anxiety, 
takes  a  candle  and  opens  the  door  of  the  room  in 
which  Kirilov  has  shut  himself.  He  opens  the 
door,  and  somebody  flies  at  him  like  a  wild  beast. 
He  shuts  the  door  with  all  his  might,  and  remains 
listening.  He  hears  nothing,  and  as  he  is  now 
convinced  that  Kirilov  will  not  commit  suicide,  he 
makes  up  his  mind  to  kill  Kirilov  himself,  now 
that  he  has  got  the  paper.  He  knows  that  in 
a  quarter  of  an  hour  his  candle  will  be  entirely 
consumed ;  he  sees  there  is  nothing  else  to  be 
done  but  to  kill  Kirilov,  but  at  the  same  time  he 
does  not  wish  to  do  it. 

238 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

At  last  he  takes  the  revolver  in  his  right  hand 
and  the  candle  in  his  left  hand,  and  with  his  left 
hand  manages  to  open  the  door.  The  room  is 
apparently  empty.  At  first  he  thinks  that  Kirilov 
has  fled  ;  then  he  becomes  aware  that  against  the 
wall,  between  a  window  and  a  cupboard,  Kirilov  is 
standing,  stiff  and  motionless  as  a  ghost.  He 
rushes  toward  him.  Kirilov  remains  motionless, 
but  his  eye  is  fixed  on  Peter,  and  a  sardonic  smile 
is  on  his  lips,  as  though  he  had  guessed  what  was 
in  Peter's  mind.  Peter,  losing  all  self-control,  flies 
at  Kirilov,  who  knocks  the  candle  out  of  Peter's 
hand,  and  bites  his  little  finger  nearly  in  two. 
Peter  beats  him  on  the  head  with  the  butt  of 
his  revolver,  and  escapes  from  the  room.  As 
he  escapes,  he  hears  terrifying  screams  of  "  At 
once  !  at  once  !  at  once  !  "  Peter  is  running  for 
his  life,  and  is  already  in  the  vestibule  of  the 
house,  when  he  hears  a  revolver  shot.  Then 
he  goes  back  and  finds  that  Kirilov  has  killed 
himself. 

This  is  practically  the  end  of  the  book.  Peter 
gets  away  to  St.  Petersburg,  and  all  his  machi- 
nations are  discovered.  The  corpse  of  Chatov  is 
found ;  the  declaration  in  Kirilov's  handwriting 
at  first  misleads  the  police,  but  the  whole  truth 
soon  comes  out,  since  nearly  all  the  conspirators 
confess,  each  being  overcome  with  remorse.  Peter 
escapes  and  goes  abroad.  Nicholas  Stavrogin 
239 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

returns  to  his  home  from  St.  Petersburg ;  he  is 
not  inculpated  in  any  way  in  the  plots,  since  the 
conspirators  bear  witness  that  he  had  nothing  to 
do  with  them.  But  he  hangs  himself  neverthe- 
less. 

As  I  have  said  before,  the  chief  characters  of 
this  book,  Stavrogin,  Peter,  Chatov,  and  Kirilov, 
who  seemed  such  gross  exaggerations  when  the 
book  was  published,  would  surprise  nobody  who 
has  had  any  experience  of  contemporary  Russia. 
Indeed,  Peter  is  less  an  imitation  of  Nechaev  than 
a  prototype  of  Azev.  As  to  Kirilov,  there  are 
dozens  of  such  men,  possessed  by  one  idea 
and  one  idea  only,  in  Russia.  Stavrogin  also 
is  a  type  which  occurs  throughout  Russian 
history.  Stavrogin  has  something  of  Peter  the 
Great  in  him,  Peter  the  Great  run  to  seed,  and 
of  such   there   are  also    many  in    Russia  to-day. 

VIII 

The  Brothers  Karamazov 

The  subject  of  The  Brothers  Karamazov^  had 
occupied  Dostoievsky's  mind  ever  since  1870, 
but  he  did  not  begin  to  write  it  until  1879,  and 
when  he  died  in  1881,  only  half  the  book  was 
finished ;  in  fact,  he  never  even  reached  what  he 

^  The  French  translation  of  this  book  is  an  abridgment.      It  is 
quite  incomplete. 

240 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

intended  to  be  the  real  subject  of  the  book.  The 
subject  was  to  be  the  life  of  a  great  sinner,  Alosha 
Karamazov.  But  when  Dostoievsky  died,  he  had 
only  written  the  prelude,  in  itself  an  extremely 
long  book ;  and  in  this  prelude  he  told  the  story 
of  the  bringing  up  of  his  hero,  his  surroundings 
and  his  early  life,  and  in  so  doing  he  tells  us 
all  that  is  important  about  his  hero's  brothers 
and  father.  The  story  of  Alosha's  two  brothers, 
and  of  their  relations  to  their  father,  is  in 
itself  so  rich  in  incident  and  ideas  that  it 
occupies  the  whole  book,  and  Dostoievsky  died 
before  he  had  reached  the  development  of  Alosha 
himself 

The  father  is  a  cynical  sensualist,  utterly 
wanting  in  balance,  vain,  loquacious,  and  foolish. 
His  eldest  son,  Mitya,  inherits  his  father's  -  sensu- 
ality, but  at  the  same  time  he  has  the  energy 
and  strength  of  his  mother,  his  father's  first  wife ; 
Mitya  is  full  of  energy  and  strength.  His  nature 
does  not  know  discipline ;  and  since  his  passions 
have  neither  curb  nor  limit,  they  drive  him  to 
catastrophe.  His  nature  is  a  mixture  of  fire 
and  dross,  and  the  dross  has  to  be  purged  by 
intense  suffering.  Like  Raskolnikov,  Mitya  has 
to  expiate  a  crime.  Circumstantial  evidence 
seems  to  indicate  that  he  has  killed  his  father. 
Everything  points  to  it,  so  much  so  that  when 
one  reads  the   book  without    knowing   the  story 

Q  241 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

beforehand,  one's  mind  shifts  from  doubt  to 
certainty,  and  from  certainty  to  doubt,  just  as 
though  one  were  following  some  absorbing 
criminal  story  in  real  life.  After  a  long  series 
of  legal  proceedings,  cross  -  examinations,  and  a 
trial  in  which  the  lawyers  perform  miracles  of 
forensic  art,  Mitya  is  finally  condemned.  I  will 
not  spoil  the  reader's  pleasure  by  saying  whether 
Mitya  is  guilty  or  not,  because  there  is  something 
more  than  idle  curiosity  excited  by  this  problem 
as  one  reads  the  book.  The  question  seems 
to  test  to  the  utmost  one's  power  of  judging 
character,  so  abundant  and  so  intensely  vivid  are 
the  psychological  data  which  the  author  gives  us. 
Moreover,  the  question  as  to  whether  Mitya  did 
or  did  not  kill  his  father  is  in  reality  only  a  side- 
issue  in  the  book  ;^the  main  subjects  of  which  are, 
firstly,  the  character  of  the  hero,  which  is  made  to 
rise  before  us  in  its  entirety,  although  we  do  not 
get  as  far  as  the  vicissitudes  through  which  it  is 
to  pass.  >  Secondly,  the  root-idea  of  the  book  is 
an  attack  upon  materialism,  and  the  character  of 
Alosha  forms  a  part  of  this  attack.  Materialism 
is  represented  in  the  second  of  the  brothers,  Ivan 
Karamazov,  and  a  great  part  of  the  book  is 
devoted  to  the  tragedy  and  the  crisis  of  Ivan's 
life. 

Ivan's  mind  is,  as  he  says  himself,  Euclidean 
and    quite    material.      It  is    impossible,  he  says, 
242 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

to  love  men  when  they  are  near  to  you.  You 
can  only  love  them  at  a  distance.  Men  are  hate- 
ful, and  there  is  sufficient  proof  of  this  in  the 
sufferings  which  children  alone  have  to  endure 
upon  earth.  At  the  same  time,  his  logical  mind 
finds  nothing  to  wonder  at  in  the  universal  suffer- 
ings of  mankind.  Men,  he  says,  are  themselves 
guilty :  they  were  given  Paradise,  they  wished  for 
freedom,  and  they  stole  fire  from  heaven,  knowing 
that  they  would  thereby  become  unhappy  ;  there- 
fore they  are  not  to  be  pitied.  He  only  knows 
that  suffering  exists,  that  no  one  is  guilty,  that 
one  thing  follows  from  another  perfectly  simply, 
that  everything  proceeds  from  something  else,  and 
that  everything  works  out  as  in  an  equation. 
But  this  is  not  enough  for  him  :  it  is  not  enough 
for  him  to  recognise  that  one  thing  proceeds 
simply  and  directly  from  another.  He  wants 
something  else  ;  he  must  needs  have  compensation 
and  retribution,  otherwise  he  would  destroy  him- 
self; and  he  does  not  want  to  obtain  this  com- 
pensation somewhere  and  some  time,  in  infinity, 
but  here  and  now,  on  earth,  so  that  he  should  see 
it  himself.  He  has  not  suffered,  merely  in  order 
that  his  very  self  should  supply,  by  its  evil  deeds 
and  its  passions,  the  manure  out  of  which  some  far- 
off  future  harmony  may  arise.  He  wishes  to  see 
with  his  own  eyes  how  the  lion  shall  lie  down  with 
the  lamb.  The  great  stumbling-block  to  him  is 
243 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

the  question  of  children  :  the  sufferings  of  children. 
If  all  men  have  to  suffer,  in  order  that  by  their 
suffering  they  may  build  an  eternal  harmony, 
what  have  children  got  to  do  with  this  ?  It  is 
inexplicable  that  they  should  suffer,  and  that  it 
should  be  necessary  for  them  to  attain  to  an  eternal 
harmony  by  their  sufferings.  Why  should  they 
fall  into  the  material  earth,  and  make  manure  for 
some  future  harmony?  He  understands  that 
there  can  be  solidarity  in  sin  between  men  ;  he 
understands  the  idea  of  solidarity  and  retaliation, 
but  he  cannot  understand  the  idea  of  solidarity 
with  children  in  sin.  The  mocker  will  say,  he 
adds,  that  the  child  will  grow  up  and  have  time 
to  sin  ;  but  he  is  not  yet  grown  up.  He  under- 
stands, he  says,  what  the  universal  vibration  of 
joy  must  be,  when  everything  in  heaven  and  on 
earth  joins  in  one  shout  of  praise,  and  every  living 
thing  cries  aloud,  "  Thou  art  just,  O  Lord,  for 
Thou  hast  revealed  Thy  ways."  And  when  the 
mother  shall  embrace  the  man  who  tormented  and 
tore  her  child  to  bits, — when  mother,  child,  and 
tormentor  shall  all  join  in  the  cry,  ''Lord,  Thou 
art  just ! "  then  naturally  the  full  revelation  will 
be  accomplished  and  everything  will  be  made 
plain.  Perhaps,  he  says,  he  would  join  in  the 
Hosanna  himself,  were  that  moment  to  come,  but 
he  does  not  wish  to  do  so  ;  while  there  is  yet  time, 
he  wishes  to  guard  himself  against  so  doing,  and 
244 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

therefore  he  entirely  renounces  any  idea  of  the 
higher  harmony.  '/Je  does  not  consider  it  worth 
the  smallest  tear  of  one^S-yffering  child  ;  it  is  not 
worth  it,  because  he  considers--that  such  tears  are 
irreparable,-  'and  that  no  compensation  can  be 
made  for  them  ;  and  if  they  are  not  compensated 
for,  how  can  there  be  an  eternal  harmony  ?  But 
for  a  child's  tears,  he  says,  there  is  no  compensation, 
for  retribution — that  is  to  say,  the  punishment  of 
those  who  caused  the  suffering — is  not  compensa- 
tion. Finally,  he  does  not  think  that  the  mother 
ha;s  the  right  to  forgive  the  man  who  caused  her 
children  to  suffer ;  she  may  forgive  him  for  her 
o\'vn  sufferings,  but  she  has  not  the  right  to 
fci'rgive  him  the  sufferings  of  her  children.  And 
\'vithout  such  forgiveness  there  can  be  no  harmony. 
It  is  for  love  of  mankind  that  he  does  not 
desire  this  harmony:  he  prefers  to  remain  with 
his  irreparable  wrong,  for  which  no  compensation 
Can  be  made.  He  prefers  to  remain  with  his 
unavenged  and  unavengeable  injuries  and  his 
tireless  indignation.  Even  if  he  is  not  right, 
they  have  put  too  high  a  price,  he  says,  on  this 
eternal  harmony.  "  We  cannot  afford  to  pay  so 
much  for  i>  ;  we  cannot  afford  to  pay  so  much  for 
the  ticket  of  d?d mission  into  it.  Therefore  I  give 
it  back.  And  )f  I  am  an  honest  man,  I  am 
obliged  to  give^^t  back  as  soon  as  possible.  This 
I   do.      It  is /'not   because   I   do  not  acknowledge 

245 


./ 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATVRE 

God,  only  I  must  respectfully  reAurn  Him  the 
ticket." 

The  result  of  Ivan's  philos^-^phy  is  logical 
egotism  and  materialism.  But  his' whole  theory 
is  upset,  owing  to  its  being  pushed  to 'its  logical 
conclusion  by  a  half-brother  of  the  Karamazovs, 
a  lackey,  Smerdyakov,  who  puts  into  practic'^e  the 
theories  of  Ivan,  and  commits  first  a  crime  and 
then  suicide.  This  and  a  severe  illness  com'.bine 
to  shatter  Ivan's  theories.  His  physical  bei'ng 
may  recover,  but  one  sees  that  his  epicurean 
theories  of  life  cannot  subsist. 

In  sharp  contrast  to  the  two  elder  brothers  is 
the  third  brother,  Alosha,  the  hero  of  the  boof'c. 
He  is  one  of  the  finest  and  most  sympathetic 
characters  that  Dostoievsky  created.  He  has  the' 
simplicity  of  "  The  Idiot,"  without  his  naivete,  and 
without  the  abnormality  arising  from  epilepsy. 
He  is  a  normal  man,  perfectly  sane  and  sensible^. 
He  is  the  very  incarnation  of  "  sweet  reasonable- 
ness." He  is  Ivan  Durak,  Ivan  the  Fool,  but 
without  being  a  fool.  Alosha,  Dostoievsky  s3-ys, 
was  in  no  way  a  fanatic  ;  he  was  not  even 
what  most  people  call  a  mystic,  but  si'riiply  a 
lover  of  human  beings;  he  loved  humanity;  all 
his  life  he  believed  in  men,  and  yet  nobody  would 
have  taken  him  for  a  fool  or  for  a  simple  creature. 
There  was  something  in  him  which' convinced  you 
that  he  did  not  wish  to  be  a  judge  V^f  iiien,  that 
246 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

he  did  not  wish  to  claim  or  exercise  the  right  of 
judging  others.  One  remarkable  fact  about  his 
character,  which  is  equally  true  of  Dostoievsky's 
own  character,  was  that  Alosha  with  this  wide 
tolerance  never  put  on  blinkers,  or  shut  his  eyes 
to  the  wickedness  of  man,  or  to  the  ugliness  of 
life.  No  one  could  astonish  or  frighten  him, 
even  when  he  was  quite  a  child.  Every  one 
loved  him  wherever  he  went.  Nor  did  he  ever 
win  the  love  of  people  by  calculation,  or  cunning, 
or  by  the  craft  of  pleasing.  But  he  possessed  in 
himself  the  gift  of  making  people  love  him.  It 
was  innate  in  him ;  it  acted  immediately  and 
directly,  and  with  perfect  naturalness.  The  basis 
of  his  character  was  that  he  was  a  Realist.  When 
he  was  in  the  monastery  where  he  spent  a  part  of 
his  youth,  he  believed  in  miracles  ;  but  Dostoievsky 
says,  "  Miracles  never  trouble  a  Realist  ;  it  is  not 
miracles  which  incline  a  Realist  to  believe.  A 
true  Realist,  if  he  is  not  a  believer,  will  always 
find  in  himself  sufficient  strength  and  sufficient 
capacity  to  disbelieve  even  in  a  miracle.  And  if 
a  miracle  appears  before  him  as  an  undeniable 
fact,  he  will  sooner  disbelieve  in  his  senses  than 
admit  the  fact  of  the  miracle.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  admits  it,  he  will  admit  it  as  a  natural 
fact,  which  up  to  the  present  he  was  unaware  of. 
The  Realist  does  not  believe  in  God  because  he 
believes  in  miracles,  but  he  believes  in  miracles 
247 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

because  he  believes  in  God.  If  a  Realist  believes 
in  God,  his  realism  will  necessarily  lead  him  to 
admit  the  existence  of  miracles  also." 

Alosha's  religion,  therefore,  was  based  on 
common  sense,  and  admitted  of  no  compromise. 
As  soon  as,  after  having  thought  about  the  matter, 
he  becomes  convinced  that  God  and  the  immortality 
of  the  soul  exist,  he  immediately  says  to  himself 
quite  naturally :  "  I  wish  to  live  for  the  future  life, 
and  to  admit  of  no  half-way  house."  And  just 
in  the  same  way,  had  he  been  convinced  that 
God  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul  do  not 
exist,  he  would  have  become  an  atheist  and  a 
socialist.  For  Dostoievsky  says  that  Socialism  is 
not  only  a  social  problem,  but  an  atheistic 
problem.  It  is  the  problem  of  the  incarnation  of 
atheism,  the  problem  of  a  Tower  of  Babel  to 
be  made  without  God,  not  in  order  to  reach 
Heaven  from  earth,  but  to  bring  Heaven  down 
to  earth. 

Alosha  wishes  to  spend  his  whole  life  in  the 
monastery,  and  to  give  himself  up  entirely  to 
religion,  but  he  is  not  allowed  to  do  so.  In  the 
monastery,  Alosha  finds  a  spiritual  father,  Zosima. 
This  character,  which  is  drawn  with  power  and 
vividness,  strikes  us  as  being  a  blend  of  saintliness, 
solid  sense,  and  warm  humanity.  He  is  an  old 
man,  and  he  dies  in  the  convent ;  but  before  he 
dies,  he  sees  Alosha,  and  tells  him  that  he  must 
248 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

leave  the  convent  for  ever ;  he  must  go  out  into 
the  world,  and  live  in  the  world,  and  suffer.  "  You 
will  have  many  adversaries,"  he  says  to  him,  "  but 
even  your  enemies  will  love  you.  Life  will  bring 
you  many  misfortunes,  but  you  will  be  happy  on 
account  of  them,  and  you  will  bless  life  and  cause 
others  to  bless  it.  That  is  the  most  important 
thing  of  all."  Alosha  is  to  go  into  the  world  and 
submit  to  many  trials,  for  he  is  a  Karamazov  too, 
and  the  microbe  of  lust  which  rages  in  the  blood 
of  that  family  is  in  him  also.  He  is  to  put  into 
practice  Father  Zosima's  precepts  :  "  Be  no  man's 
judge ;  humble  love  is  a  terrible  power  which 
effects  more  than  violence.  Only  active  love  can 
bring  out  faith.  Love  men  and  do  not  be  afraid 
of  their  sins :  love  man  in  his  sin  ;  love  all  the 
creatures  of  God,  and  pray  God  to  make  you 
cheerful.  Be  cheerful  as  children  and  as  the 
birds."  These  are  the  precepts  which  Alosha  is 
to  carry  out  in  the  face  of  many  trials.  How  he 
does  so  we  never  see,  for  the  book  ends  before 
his  trials  begin,  and  all  we  see  is  the  strength  of 
his  influence,  the  effect  of  the  sweetness  of  his 
character  in  relation  to  the  trials  of  his  two 
brothers,  Mitya  and  Ivan. 

That     Dostoievsky    should    have    died    before 
finishing  this  monumental  work  which  would  have 
been  his  masterpiece,  is  a  great  calamity.      Never- 
theless the  book  is  not  incomplete  in  itself:  it  is 
249 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

a  large  piece  of  life,  and  it  contains  the  whole  of 
Dostoievsky's  philosophy  and  ideas.  Moreover, 
considered  merely  as  a  novel,  as  a  book  to  be 
read  from  the  point  of  view  of  being  entertained, 
and  excited  about  what  is  going  to  happen  next,  it 
is  of  enthralling  interest.  This  book,  therefore, 
can  be  recommended  to  a  hermit  who  wishes  to 
ponder  over  something  deep,  in  a  cell  or  on  a 
desert  island,  to  a  philosopher  who  wishes  to 
sharpen  his  thoughts  against  a  hard  whetstone, 
to  a  man  who  is  unhappy  and  wishes  to  find 
some  healing  balm,  or  to  a  man  who  is  going  on 
a  railway  journey  and  wishes  for  an  exciting 
story  to  while  away  the  time. 

IX 

This  study  of  Dostoievsky,  or  rather  this 
suggestion  for  a  study  of  his  work,  cannot 
help  being  sketchy  and  incomplete.  I  have  not 
only  not  dealt  with  his  shorter  stories,  such  as 
White  Nights,  The  Friend  of  the  Family^  The 
Gambler  and  The  Double,  but  I  have  not  even 
mentioned  two  longer  novels,  The  Hobbledehoy  and 
Despised  and  Rejected.  The  last  named,  though 
it  suffers  from  being  somewhat  melodramatic  in 
parts,  contains  as  strong  a  note  of  pathos  as  is 
to  be  found  in  any  of  Dostoievsky's  books ;  and 
an  incident  of  this  book  has  been  singled  out  by 
250 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson  as  being — together  with 
the  moment  when  Mark  Antony  takes  off  his  helmet, 
and  the  scene  when  Kent  has  pity  on  the  dying  Lear 
— one  of  the  most  greatly  moving  episodes  in  the 
whole  of  literature.  The  reason  why  I  have  not 
dwelt  on  these  minor  works  is  that  to  the  English 
reader,  unacquainted  with  Dostoievsky,  an  exact 
and  minute  analysis  of  his  works  can  only  be 
tedious.  I  have  only  dealt  with  the  very  broadest 
outline  of  the  case,  so  as  to  enable  the  reader  to 
make  up  his  mind  whether  he  wishes  to  become 
acquainted  with  Dostoievsky's  work  at  all.  My 
object  has  been  merely  to  open  the  door,  and  not 
to  act  as  a  guide  and  to  show  him  over  every  part 
of  the  house.  If  I  have  inspired  him  with  a  wish 
to  enter  the  house,  I  have  succeeded  in  my  task. 
Should  he  wish  for  better-informed  guides  and 
fuller  guide-books,  he  will  find  them  in  plenty ; 
but  guides  and  guide-books  are  utterly  useless  to 
people  who  do  not  wish  to  visit  the  country  of 
which  they  treat.  And  my  sole  object  has  been 
to  give  in  the  broadest  manner  possible  a  rough 
sketch  of  the  nature  of  the  country,  so  as  to  enable 
the  traveller  to  make  up  his  mind  whether  he 
thinks  it  worth  while  or  not  to  buy  a  ticket  and 
to  set  forth  on  a  voyage  of  exploration.  Should 
such  an  one  decide  that  the  exploration  is  to  him 
attractive  and  worth  his  while,  I  should  advise 
him  to  begin  with  The  Letters  from  a  Dead  House, 
251 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

and  to  go  on  with  The  Idiot,  Crime  and  Punish- 
ment, and  The  Brothers  Karamazov ;  and  to  read 
The  Possessed  last  of  all.  If  he  understands  and 
appreciates  The  Letters  from  a  Dead  House,  he 
will  be  able  to  understand  and  appreciate  the 
character  of  Dostoievsky  and  the  main  ideas  which 
lie  at  the  root  of  all  his  books.  If  he  is  able  to 
understand  and  appreciate  The  Idiot,  he  will  be 
able  to  understand  and  appreciate  the  whole  of 
Dostoievsky's  writings.  But  should  he  begin  with 
Crime  and  Punishment,  or  The  Possessed,  it  is 
possible  that  he  might  be  put  off,  and  relinquish 
the  attempt;  just  as  it  is  possible  that  a  man  who 
took  up  Shakespeare's  plays  for  the  first  time  and 
began  with  King  Lear,  might  make  up  his  mind 
not  to  persevere,  but  to  choose  some  more  cheerful 
author.  And  by  so  doing  he  would  probably  lose 
a  great  deal,  since  a  man  who  is  repelled  by  King 
Lear  might  very  well  be  able  to  appreciate  not 
only  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  but  Henry  IV  and 
the  Winter's  Tale.  If  one  were  asked  to  sum  up 
briefly  what  was  Dostoievsky's  message  to  his 
generation  and  to  the  world  in  general,  one  could  do 
so  in  two  words :  love  and  pity.  The  love  which 
is  in  Dostoievsky's  work  is  so  great,  so  bountiful, 
so  overflowing,  that  it  is  impossible  to  find  a 
parallel  to  it,  either  in  ancient  or  in  modern 
literature.  It  is  human,  but  more  than  human, 
that  is  to  say,  divine.  Supposing  the  Gospel  of 
252 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

St.  John  were  to  be  annihilated  and  lost  to  us 
for  ever,  although  nothing  could  replace  it, 
Dostoievsky's  work  would  go  nearer  to  replacing 
it  than  any  other  books  written  by  any  other  man. 
It  is  the  love  which  faces  everything  and  which 
shrinks  from  nothing.  It  is  the  love  which  that 
saint  felt  who  sought  out  the  starving  and  freez- 
ing beggar,  and  warmed  and  embraced  him, 
although  he  was  covered  with  sores,  and  who 
was  rewarded  by  the  beggar  turning  into  His 
Lord  and  lifting  him  up  into  the  infinite  spaces 
of  Heaven. 

Dostoievsky  tells  us  that  the  most  complete  of 
his  characters,  Alosha,  is  a  Realist,  and  that  was 
what  Dostoievsky  was  himself.  He  was  a  Realist 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  and  he  was  exactly 
the  contrary  of  those  people  who  when  they  wrote 
particularly  filthy  novels  in  which  they  singled  out 
and  dwelt  at  length  on  certain  revolting  details 
of  life,  called  themselves  Realists.  He  saw  things 
as  they  really  are ;  he  never  shut  his  eyes  or 
averted  his  gaze  from  anything  which  was  either 
cruel,  hateful,  ugly,  bitter,  diseased  or  obscene ; 
but  the  more  he  looked  at  the  ugly  things,  the 
more  firmly  he  became  convinced  of  the  goodness 
that  is  in  and  behind  everything :  To  put  it 
briefly,  the  more  clearly  he  realised  mortal  misery 
and  sin,  the  more  firmly  he  believed  in  God. 
Therefore,  as  I  have  more  than  once  said  in  this 
253 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

study,  although  he  sounds  the  lowest  depths  of 
human  gloom,  mortal  despair,  and  suffering,  his 
books  are  a  cry  of  triumph,  a  clarion  peal,  a 
hosanna  to  the  idea  of  goodness  and  to  the  glory 
of  God.  There  is  a  great  gulf  between  Dostoi- 
evsky and  such  novelists  as  make  of  their  art  a 
clinical  laboratory,  in  which  the  vices  and  the 
sores,  and  only  the  vices  and  the  sores,  are  dis- 
sected and  observed,  not  under  a  microscope,  but 
under  a  magnifying-glass,  so  that  a  totally  dis- 
torted and  exaggerated  impression  of  life  is  the 
result.  And  this  all  the  more  remarkable, 
because  a  large  part  of  his  most  important  char- 
acters are  abnormal :  monomaniacs,  murderers, 
or  epileptics.  But  it  is  in  dealing  with  such 
characters  that  the  secret  of  Dostoievsky's  great- 
ness is  revealed.  For  in  contradistinction  to 
many  writers  who  show  us  what  is  insane  in  the 
sanest  men,  who  search  for  and  find  a  spot  of 
disease  in  the  healthiest  body,  a  blemish  in  the 
fairest  flower,  a  flaw  in  the  brightest  ruby, 
Dostoievsky  seeks  and  finds  the  sanity  of  the 
insane,  a  healthy  spot  in  the  sorest  soul,  a  gleam 
of  gold  in  the  darkest  mine,  a  pearl  in  the  filthiest 
refuse  heap,  a  spring  in  the  most  arid  desert.  In 
depicting  humanity  at  its  lowest  depth  of  misery  and 
the  human  soul  at  its  highest  pitch  of  anguish,  he 
is  making  a  great  act  of  faith,  and  an  act  of  charity, 
and  conferring  a  huge  benefit  on  mankind.  For  in 
254 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

depicting  the  extremest  pain  of  abnormal  sufferers, 
he  persuades  us  of  the  good  that  exists  even  in 
such  men,  and  of  the  goodness  that  is  in  suffer- 
ing itself;  and  by  taking  us  in  the  darkest  of 
dungeons,  he  gives  us  a  glimpse  such  as  no  one 
else  has  given  us  of  infinite  light  and  love. 

On  the  other  hand,  Dostoievsky  is  equally  far 
removed  from  such  writers  (of  v/hich  we  have 
plenty  in  England)  who  throw  a  cloak  over  all  evil 
things,  and  put  on  blinkers,  and  who,  because  the 
existence  of  evil  is  distasteful  to  them,  refuse 
to  admit  and  face  it.  Such  an  attitude  is 
the  direct  outcome  of  either  conscious  or  un- 
conscious hypocrisy.  Dostoievsky  has  not  a 
grain  of  hypocrisy  in  his  nature,  and  therefore 
such  an  attitude  is  impossible  to  him. 

Dostoievsky  is  a  Realist,  and  he  sees  things 
as  they  are  all  through  life,  from  the  most 
important  matters  down  to  the  most  trivial. 
He  is  free  from  cant,  either  moral  or  political, 
and  absolutely  free  from  all  prejudice  of  caste 
or  class.  It  is  impossible  for  him  to  think 
that  because  a  man  is  a  revolutionary  he  must 
therefore  be  a  braver  man  than  his  fellows,  or 
because  a  man  is  a  Conservative  he  must  there- 
fore be  a  more  cruel  man  than  his  fellows,  just 
as  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  think  the  contrary, 
and  to  believe  that  because  a  man  is  a  Con- 
servative he  cannot  help  being  honest,  or  because 
255 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

a  man  is  a  Radical  he  must  inevitably  be  a 
scoundrel.  He  judges  men  and  things  as  they 
are,  quite  apart  from  the  labels  which  they  choose 
to  give  to  their  political  opinions.  That  is  why 
nobody  who  is  by  nature  a  doctrinaire^  can 
appreciate  or  enjoy  the  works  of  Dostoievsky, 
since  any  one  who  bases  his  conduct  upon  theory 
cannot  help  at  all  costs  being  rudely  shocked  at 
every  moment  by  Dostoievsky's  creed,  which  is 
based  on  reality  and  on  reality  alone.  Dostoi- 
evsky sees  and  embraces  everything  as  it  really  is. 
The  existence  of  evil,  of  ugliness  and  of  suffering, 
inspires  him  with  only  one  thing,  and  this  is 
pity ;  and  his  pity  is  like  that  which  King  Lear 
felt  on  the  Heath  when  he  said  : 

"  Poor  naked  wretches,  wheresoe'er  you  are, 
That  bide  the  pelting  of  this  pitiless  storm, 
How  shall  your  houseless  heads  and  unfed  sides, 
Your  loop'd  and  window'd  raggedness,  defend  you 
From  seasons  such  as  these?   O,  I  have  ta'en 
Too  little  care  of  this  !     Take  physic,  pomp ; 
Expose  thyself  to  feel  what  wretches  feel, 
That  thou  may'st  shake  the  superflux  to  them, 
And  show  the  heavens  more  just." 

Dostoievsky  has  a  right  to  say  such  things, 
because  throughout  his  life  he  not  only  exposed 
himself,  but  was  exposed,  to  feel  what  wretches 

^  By  a  doctrinaire  I  mean  not  a  man  who  has  strong  principles  and 
convictions ;  but  a  man  who  deliberately  shuts  his  eyes  to  those 
facts  which  contradict  his  theory,  and  will  pursue  it  to  the  end  even 
when  by  so  doing  the  practice  resulting  is  the  contrary  of  his  aim. 

256 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

feel ;  because  he  might  have  said  as  King  Lear 
said  to  Cordeh'a: 

"  I  am  bound 
Upon  a  wheel  of  fire  that  mine  own  tears 
Do  scald  like  molten  lead." 

He  knew  what  wretches  feel,  by  experience  and 
not  by  theory,  and  all  his  life  he  was  bound  upon 
a  "  wheel  of  fire." 

With  regard  to  Dostoievsky's  political  opinions, 
he  synthesised  and  expressed  them  all  in  the 
speech  which  he  made  in  June  1880,  at  Moscow, 
in  memory  of  Pushkin.  "  There  was  never,"  he 
said,  "  a  poet  who  possessed  such  universal  re- 
ceptivity as  Pushkin.  It  was  not  only  that  he 
was  receptive,  but  this  receptivity  was  so  extra- 
ordinarily deep,  that  he  was  able  to  embrace  and 
absorb  in  his  soul  the  spirit  of  foreign  nations. 
No  other  poet  has  ever  possessed  such  a  gift ; 
only  Pushkin ;  and  Pushkin  is  in  this  sense  a 
unique  and  a  prophetic  apparition,  since  it 
is  owing  to  this  gift,  and  by  means  of  it,  that 
the  strength  of  Pushkin — that  in  him  which  is 
national  and  Russian — found  expression.  .  .  . 
For  what  is  the  strength  of  the  Russian  national 
spirit  other  than  an  aspiration  towards  a  uni- 
versal spirit,  which  shall  embrace  the  whole  world 
and  the  whole  of  mankind  ?  And  because  Pushkin 
expressed  the  national  strength,  he  anticipated 
and    foretold    its    future    meaning.       Because   of 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

this  he  was  a  prophet.  For  what  did  Peter  the 
Great's  reforms  mean  to  us  ?  I  am  not  only 
speaking  of  what  they  were  to  bring  about  in 
the  future,  but  of  what  they  were  when  they  were 
carried  out.  These  reforms  were  not  merely 
a  matter  of  adopting  European  dress,  habits,  in- 
struction and  science.  .  .  .  But  the  men  who 
adopted  them  aspired  towards  the  union  and 
the  fraternity  of  the  world.  We  in  no  hostile 
fashion,  as  would  seem  to  have  been  the 
case,  but  in  all  friendliness  and  love,  received 
into  our  spirit  the  genius  of  foreign  nations, 
of  all  foreign  nations,  without  any  distinction 
of  race,  and  we  were  able  by  instinct  and  at 
the  first  glance  to  distinguish,  to  eliminate  con- 
tradictions, to  reconcile  differences ;  and  by  this 
we  expressed  our  readiness  and  our  inclination, 
we  who  had  only  just  been  united  together  and 
had  found  expression,  to  bring  about  a  universal 
union  of  all  the  great  Aryan  race.  The  signi- 
ficance of  the  Russian  race  is  without  doubt 
European  and  universal.  To  be  a  real  Russian 
and  to  be  wholly  Russian  means  only  this :  to  be 
a  brother  of  all  men,  to  be  universally  human. 
All  this  is  called  Slavophilism ;  and  what  we 
call  '  Westernism '  is  only  a  great,  although  a 
historical  and  inevitable  misunderstanding.  To 
the  true  Russian,  Europe  and  the  affairs  of  the 
great  Aryan  race,  are  as  dear  as  the  affairs  of 
258 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

Russia  herself  and  of  his  native  country,  because 
our  affairs  are  the  affairs  of  the  whole  world,  and 
they  are  not  to  be  obtained  by  the  sword,  but  by 
the  strength  of  fraternity  and  by  our  brotherly 
effort  towards  the  universal  union  of  mankind. 
.  .  .  And  in  the  long-run  I  am  convinced  that 
we,  that  is  to  say,  not  we,  but  the  future  genera- 
tions of  the  Russian  people,  shall  every  one  of  us, 
from  the  first  to  the  last,  understand  that  to  be  a 
real  Russian  must  signify  simply  this  :  to  strive 
towards  bringing  about  a  solution  and  an  end  to 
European  conflicts ;  to  show  to  Europe  a  way  of 
escape  from  its  anguish  in  the  Russian  soul,  which 
is  universal  and  all-embracing ;  to  instil  into 
her  a  brotherly  love  for  all  men's  brothers,  and 
in  the  end  perhaps  to  utter  the  great  and  final 
word  of  universal  harmony,  the  fraternal  and 
lasting  concord  of  all  peoples  according  to  the 
gospel   of  Christ." 

So  much  for  the  characteristics  of  Dostoievsky's 
moral  and  political  ideals.  There  remains  a  third 
aspect  of  the  man  to  be  dealt  with  :  his  signifi- 
cance as  a  writer,  as  an  artist,  and  as  a  maker  of 
books ;  his  place  in  Russian  literature,  and  in  the 
literature  of  the  world.  This  is,  I  think,  not  very 
difficult  to  define.  Dostoievsky,  in  spite  of  the 
universality  of  his  nature,  in  spite  of  his  large 
sympathy  and  his  gift  of  understanding  and  assimi- 
lation, was  debarred,  owing  to  the  violence  and  the 
259 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

want  of  balance  of  his  temperament,  which  was 
largely  the  result  of  disease,  from  seeing  life 
steadily  and  seeing  it  whole.  The  greatest  fault 
of  his  genius,  his  character,  and  his  work,  is  a 
want  of  proportion.  His  work  is  often  shapeless, 
and  the  incidents  in  his  books  are  sometimes  fan- 
tastic and  extravagant  to  the  verge  of  insanity. 
Nevertheless  his  vision,  and  his  power  of  express- 
ing that  vision,  make  up  for  what  they  lose  in 
serenity  and  breadth,  by  their  intensity,  their 
depth  and  their  penetration.  He  could  not  look 
upon  the  whole  world  with  the  calm  of  Sophocles 
and  of  Shakespeare ;  he  could  not  paint  a  large 
and  luminous  panorama  of  life  unmarred  by  any 
trace  of  exaggeration,  as  Tolstoy  did.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  realised  and  perceived  certain 
heights  and  depths  of  the  human  soul  which  were 
beyond  the  range  of  Tolstoy,  and  almost  beyond 
that  of  Shakespeare.  His  position  with  regard  to 
Tolstoy,  Fielding,  and  other  great  novelists  is  like 
that  of  Marlowe  with  regard  to  Shakespeare. 
Marlowe's  plays  compared  with  those  of  Shake- 
speare are  like  a  series  of  tumultuous  fugues,  on 
the  same  theme,  played  on  an  organ  which 
possesses  but  a  few  tremendous  stops,  compared 
with  the  interpretation  of  music,  infinitely  various 
in  mood,  by  stringed  instruments  played  in  perfect 
concord,  and  rendering  the  finest  and  most  subtle 
gradations  and  shades  of  musical  phrase  and 
260 


DOSTOIEVSKY 

intention.  But  every  now  and  then  the  organ- 
fugue,  with  its  thunderous  bass  notes  and  soar- 
ing treble,  attains  to  a  pitch  of  intensity  which 
no  delicacy  of  blended  strings  can  rival :  So, 
every  now  and  then,  Marlowe,  in  the  scenes,  for 
instance,  when  Helena  appears  to  Faustus,  when 
Zenocrate  speaks  her  passion,  when  Faustus 
counts  the  minutes  to  midnight,  awaiting  in  an 
agony  of  terror  the  coming  of  Mephistopheles,  or 
when  Edward  II  is  face  to  face  with  his  execu- 
tioners, reaches  a  pitch  of  soaring  rapture,  of 
tragic  intensity  which  is  not  to  be  found  even  in 
Shakespeare.  So  it  is  with  Dostoievsky.  His 
genius  soars  higher  and  dives  deeper  than  that 
of  any  other  novelist,  Russian  or  European. 
And  what  it  thus  gains  in  intensity  it  loses  in 
serenity,  balance  and  steadiness.  Therefore, 
though  Dostoievsky  as  a  man  possesses  quali- 
ties of  universality,  he  is  not  a  universal  artist 
such  as  Shakespeare,  or  even  as  Tolstoy,  although 
he  has  one  eminently  Shakespearian  gift,  and  that 
is  the  faculty  for  discerning  the  "  soul  of  goodness 
in  things  evil."  Yet,  as  a  writer,  he  reached  and 
expressed  the  ultimate  extreme  of  the  soul's 
rapture,  anguish  and  despair,  and  spoke  the  most 
precious  words  of  pity  which  have  been  heard  in 
the  world  since  the  Gospels  were  written.  In 
this  man  were  mingled  the  love  of  St.  John, 
and  the  passion  and  the  fury  of  a  fiend ;  but  the 
261 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

goodness  in  him  was  triumphant  over  the  evil. 
He  was  a  martyr ;  but  bound  though  he  was  on  a 
fiery  wheel,  he  maintained  that  life  was  good,  and 
he  never  ceased  to  cry  "  Hosanna  to  the  Lord : 
for  He  is  just !  "  For  this  reason  Dostoievsky  is 
something  more  than  a  Russian  writer :  he  is  a 
brother  to  all  mankind,  especially  to  those  who 
are  desolate,  afflicted  and  oppressed.  He  had 
"  great  allies  "  : 

"His  friends  were  exaltations,  agonies, 
And  love,  and  man's  unconquerable  mind." 


262 


CHAPTER   VII 
THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

ANTON  TCHEKOV  is  chiefly  known  in 
Russia  as  a  writer  of  short  stories.  ^  He  is 
a  kind  of  Russian  Guy  de  Maupassant,  without 
the  bitter  strength  of  the  French  writer,  and  with- 
out the  quality  which  the  French  call  "  cynisme/' 
which  does  not  mean  cynicism,  but  ribaldry. 

Tchekov's  stories  deal  for  the  greater  part  with 
the  middle  classes,  the  minor  landed  gentry,  the 
minor  officials,  and  the  professional  classes. 
Tolstoy  is  reported  to  have  said  that  Tchekov 
was  a  photographer,  a  very  talented  photographer, 
it  is  true,  but  still  only  a  photographer.  But 
Tchekov  has  one  quality  which  is  difficult  to  find 
among  photographers,  and  that  is  humour.  His 
stories  are  frequently  deliciously  droll.  They  are 
also  often  full  of  pathos,  and  they  invariably 
possess  the  peculiarly  Russian  quality  of  simpli- 
city and  unaffectedness.  He  never  underlines  his 
effects,  he  never  nudges  the  reader's  elbow.     Yet 

^  Two  volumes  of  selections  from  his  stories  have  been  admirably 
translated  by  Mr.  Long. 

263 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

there  is  a  certain  amount  of  truth  in  Tolstoy's 
criticism.  Tchekov  does  not  paint  with  the  great 
sweeping  brush  of  a  Velasquez,  his  stories  have 
not  the  great  broad  colouring  of  Maupassant, 
they  are  like  mezzotints ;  and  in  some  ways  they 
resemble  the  new  triumphs  of  the  latest  develop- 
ments of  artistic  photography  in  subtle  effects  of 
light  and  shade,  in  delicate  tones  and  half-tones, 
in  elusive  play  of  atmosphere. 

Apart  from  its  artistic  merits  or  defects, 
Tchekov's  work  is  historically  important  and 
interesting.  Tchekov  represents  the  extreme 
period  of  stagnation  in  Russian  life  and  literature. 
This  epoch  succeeded  to  a  period  of  comparative 
activity  following  after  the  Russo-Turkish  war. 
For  in  Russian  history  one  will  find  that  every 
war  has  been  followed  by  a  movement,  a  renas- 
cence in  ideas,  in  political  aspirations,  and  in 
literature.  Tchekov's  work  represents  the  re- 
action of  flatness  subsequent  to  a  transitory 
ebullition  of  activity ;  it  deals  with  the  very  class 
of  men  which  naturally  hankers  for  political 
activity,  but  which  in  Tchekov's  time  was  as 
naturally  debarred  from  it. 

The  result  was  that  the  aspirations  of  these 
people  beat  their  grey  wings  ineffectually  in  a 
vacuum.  The  middle  class  being  highly  educated, 
and,  if  anything,  over-educated,  aspiring  towards 
political  freedom,  and  finding  its  aspirations  to  be 
264 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

futile,  did  one  of  two  things.  It  either  moped,  or 
it  made  the  best  of  it.  The  moping  sometimes 
expressed  itself  in  political  assassination  ;  making 
the  best  of  it  meant,  as  a  general  rule,  dismissing 
the  matter  from  the  mind,  and  playing  vindt. 
Half  the  middle  class  in  Russia,  a  man  once  said 
to  me,  has  run  to  seed  in  playing  vindt.  But 
what  else  was  there  to  do  ? 

Tchekov,  more  than  any  other  writer,  has 
depicted  for  us  the  attitude  of  mind,  the  nature 
and  the  feelings  of  the  whole  of  this  generation, 
just  as  Tourgeniev  depicted  the  preceding  genera- 
tion ;  the  aspirations  and  the  life  of  the  men  who 
lived  in  the  sixties,  during  the  tumultuous  epoch 
which  culminated  in  the  liberation  of  the  serfs. 
And  nowhere  can  the  quality  of  this  frame  of 
mind,  and  the  perfume,  as  it  were,  of  this  period 
be  better  felt  and  apprehended  than  in  the  plays 
of  Anton  Tchekov ;  for  in  his  plays  we  get  not 
only  what  is  most  original  in  his  work  as  an 
artist,  but  the  quintessence  of  the  atmosphere,  the 
attitude  of  mind,  and  the  shadow  of  what  the 
Zeitgeist  brought  to  the  men  of  his  generation. 

Before  analysing  the  dramatic  work  of  Tche- 
kov, it  is  necessary  to  say  a  few  w^ords  about  the 
Russian  stage  in  general.  The  main  fact  about 
the  Russian  stage  that  differentiates  it  from  ours, 
and  from  that  of  any  other  European  country, 
is  the  absence  of  the  modern  French  tradition. 
265 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

The  tradition  of  the  "  well-made  "  French  play, 
invented  by  Scribe,  does  not,  and  never  has 
existed  in  Russia. 

Secondly,  reforniers  and  demolishers  of  this  tradi- 
tion do  not  exist  either,  for  they  have  nothing  to  re- 
form or  demolish.  In  Russia  it  was  never  necessary 
for  naturalistic  schools  to  rise  with  a  great  flourish 
of  trumpets,  and  to  proclaim  that  they  were  about 
to  destroy  the  conventions  and  artificiality  of  the 
stage,  and  to  give  to  the  public,  instead  of  childish 
sentimentalities  and  impossible  Chinese  puzzles  of 
intrigue,  slices  of  real  life.  Had  anybody  behaved 
thus  in  Russia  he  would  simply  have  been  beating 
his  hands  against  a  door  which  was  wide  open. 
For  the  Russian  drama,  like  the  Russian  novel, 
has,  without  making  any  fuss  about  it,  never  done 
but  one  thing — to  depict  life  as  clearly  as  it  saw 
it,  and  as  simply  as  it  could. 

That  is  why  there  has  never  been  a  naturalist 
school  in  Russia.  The  Russians  are  born  realists ; 
they  do  not  have  to  label  themselves  realists, 
because  realism  is  the  very  air  which  they  breathe, 
and  the  very  blood  in  their  veins.  What  was 
labelled  realism  and  naturalism  in  other  countries 
simply  appeared  to  them  to  be  a  straining  after 
effect.  Even  Ibsen,  whose  great  glory  was  that, 
having  learnt  all  the  tricks  of  the  stagecraft  of 
Scribe  and  his  followers,  he  demolished  the  whole 
system,  and  made  Comedies  and  Tragedies  just 
266 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

as  skilfully  out  of  the  tremendous  issues  of  real 
life — even  Ibsen  had  no  great  influence  in  Russia, 
because  what  interests  Russian  dramatists  is  not 
so  much  the  crashing  catastrophes  of  life  as  life 
itself,  ordinary  everyday  life,  just  as  we  all 
see  it.  "  I  go  to  the  theatre,"  a  Russian  once 
said,  "  to  see  what  I  see  every  day."  And  here 
we  have  the  fundamental  difference  between 
the  drama  of  Russia  and  that  of  any  other 
country. 

Dramatists  of  other  countries,  be  they  English, 
or  French,  or  German,  or  Norwegian,  whether 
they  belong  to  the  school  of  Ibsen,  or  to  that 
which  found  its  temple  in  the  Theatre  Antoine 
at  Paris,  had  one  thing  in  common  ;  they  were 
either  reacting  or  fighting  against  something — as 
in  the  case  of  the  Norwegian  dramatists — or  bent 
on  proving  a  thesis — as  in  the  case  of  Alexandre 
Dumas  jils,  the  Theatre  Antoine  school,  or  Mr. 
Shaw — ;  that  is  to  say,  they  were  all  actuated  by 
some  definite  purpose ;  the  stage  was  to  them  a 
kind  of  pulpit. 

On  the  English  stage  this  was  especially 
noticeable,  and  what  the  English  public  has 
specially  delighted  in  during  the  last  fifteen  years 
has  been  a  sermon  on  the  stage,  with  a  dash  of 
impropriety  in  it.  Now  the  Russian  stage  has 
never  gone  in  for  sermons  or  theses :  like  the 
Russian  novel,  it  has  been  a  looking-glass  for 
267 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

the  use  of  the  public,  and  not  a  pulpit  for  the 
use  of  the  playwright.  This  fact  is  never  more 
strikingly  illustrated  than  when  the  translation 
of  a  foreign  play  is  performed  in  Russia.  For 
instance,  when  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  play,  Mrs. 
Warrens  Profession,  was  performed  last  December 
at  the  Imperial  State-paid  Theatre  at  St.  Petersburg, 
the  attitude  of  the  public  and  of  the  critics  was 
interesting  in  the  extreme.  In  the  first  place,  that 
the  play  should  be  produced  at  the  Imperial  State- 
paid  Theatre  is  an  interesting  illustration  of  the 
difference  of  the  attitude  of  the  two  countries 
towards  the  stage.  In  England,  public  perform- 
ance of  this  play  is  forbidden ;  in  America  it 
was  hounded  off  the  stage  by  an  outraged  and 
indignant  populace ;  in  St.  Petersburg  it  is  pro- 
duced at  what,  in  Russia,  is  considered  the  temple 
of  respectability,  the  home  of  tradition,  the  citadel 
of  conservatism.  In  the  audience  were  a  quantity 
of  young,  unmarried  girls.  The  play  was  beauti- 
fully acted,  and  well  received,^  but  it  never  occurred 
to  any  one  that  it  was  either  daring  or  dangerous 
or  startling;  it  was  merely  judged  as  a  story  of 
English  life,  a  picture  of  English  manners.  Some 
people  thought  it  was  interesting,  others  that  it 
was  uninteresting,  but  almost  all  were  agreed  in 
considering  it  to  be  too  stagey  for  the  Russian 
taste ;  and  as  for  considering  it  an  epoch-making 

^  It  proved  a  success. 
268 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

work,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  region  of  thought  and 
ideas,  the  very  idea  was  scoffed  at. 

These  opinions  were  reflected  in  the  press.  In 
one  of  the  newspapers,  the  leading  Liberal  organ, 
edited  by  Professor  Milioukov,  the  theatrical 
critic  said  that  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  was  the  typical 
middle-class  Englishman,  and  satirised  the  faults 
and  follies  of  his  class,  but  that  he  himself 
belonged  to  the  class  that  he  satirised,  and  shared 
its  limitations.  "  The  play,"  they  said,  "  is  a 
typical  middle-class  English  play,  and  it  suffers 
from  the  faults  inherent  to  this  class  of  English 
work  :  false  sentiment  and  melodrama." 

Another  newspaper,  the  Rtiss,  wrote  as  follows  : 
"  Bernard  Shaw  is  thought  to  be  an  enfant  terrible 
in  England.  In  Russia  we  take  him  as  a  writer, 
and  as  a  writer  only,  who  is  not  absolutely  devoid 
of  advanced  ideas.  In  our  opinion,  his  play 
belongs  neither  to  the  extreme  right  nor  to  the 
extreme  left  of  dramatic  literature ;  it  is  an 
expression  of  the  ideas  of  moderation  which 
belong  to  the  centre,  and  the  proof  of  this  is  the 
production  of  it  at  our  State-paid  Theatre,  which 
in  our  eyes  is  the  home  and  shelter  of  what  is 
retrograde  and  respectable."  ^ 

^  The  dramatic  critics  of  these  newspapers  are  not  the  Mr. 
William  Archers,  the  Mr.  Walkleys,  not  the  Faguets  or  the 
Lemaitres  of  Russia,  if  any  such  exist.  I  have  never  come  across 
anything  of  interest  in  their  articles  ;  on  the  other  hand,  they  are 
perhaps  more  representative  of  public  opinion. 

269 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Such  was  the  opinion  of  the  newspaper  critic 
on  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  play.  It  represented  more 
or  less  the  opinion  of  the  man  in  the  street.  For 
nearly  all  European  dramatic  art,with  the  exception 
of  certain  German  and  Norwegian  work,  strikes 
the  Russian  public  as  stagey  and  artificial.  If  a 
Russian  had  written  Mrs.  Waj^refz's  Profession^  he 
would  never  have  introduced  the  scene  between 
Crofts  and  Vivy  which  occurs  at  the  end  of 
Act  III.,  because  such  a  scene,  to  a  Russian, 
savours  of  melodrama.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
would  have  had  no  hesitation  in  putting  on  the 
stage  (at  the  Imperial  State-paid  Theatre)  the 
interior,  with  all  its  details,  of  one  of  the  conti- 
nental hotels  from  which  Mrs.  Warren  derived 
her  income.  But,  as  I  have  already  said,  what 
interests  the  Russian  dramatist  most  keenly  is  not 
the  huge  catastrophes  that  stand  out  in  lurid  pre- 
eminence, but  the  incidents,  sometimes  important, 
sometimes  trivial,  and  sometimes  ludicrous,  which 
happen  to  every  human  being  every  day  of  his 
life.  And  nowhere  is  this  so  clearly  visible  as  in 
the  work  of  Tchekov ;  for  although  the  plays  of 
Tchekov — which  have  not  yet  been  discovered  in 
England,  and  which  will  soon  be  old-fashioned  in 
Russia — are  not  a  reflection  of  the  actual  state  of 
mind  of  the  Russian  people,  yet  as  far  as  their 
artistic  aim  is  concerned,  they  are  more  intensely 
typical,  and  more  successful  in  the  achievement 
270 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

of  their  aim  than  the  work  of  any  other  Russian 
dramatist.^ 

Tchekov  has  written  in  all  eleven  plays,  out  of 
which  six  are  farces  in  one  act,  and  five  are  serious 
dramas.  The  farces,  though  sometimes  very  funny, 
are  not  important ;  it  is  in  his  serious  dramatic  work 
that  Tchekov  really  found  himself,  and  gave  to 
the  world  something  new  and  entirely  original. 
The  originality  of  Tchekov's  plays  is  not  that  they 
are  realistic.  Other  dramatists — many  French- 
men, for  instance — have  written  interesting  and 
dramatic  plays  dealing  with  poignant  situations, 
happening  to  real  people  in  real  life.  Tchekov's 
discovery  is  this,  that  real  life,  as  we  see  it  every 
day,  can  be  made  just  as  interesting  on  the  stage 
as  the  catastrophes  or  the  difficulties  which  are 
more  or  less  exceptional,  but  which  are  chosen  by 
dramatists  as  their  material  because  they  are 
dramatic.  Tchekov  discovered  that  it  is  not 
necessary  for  real  life  to  be  dramatic  in  order  to 
be  interesting.  Or  rather  that  ordinary  everyday 
life  is  as  dramatic  on  the  stage,  if  by  dramatic 
one  means  interesting,  as  extraordinary  life.  He 
perceived  that  things  which  happen  to  us  every 
day,  which   interest   us,  and   affect  us   keenly,  but 

^  Since  this  was  written  Mr.  Shaw's  genius  has  had  greater  justice 
done  to  it  in  Russia.  His  Ccesar  and  Cleopatra  has  proved  highly 
successful.  It  was  produced  at  the  State  Theatre  of  Moscow  in  the 
autumn  of  1909  and  is  still  running  as  I  write.  Several  intelli- 
gent articles  were  written  on  it  in  the  Moscow  press, 

271 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

which  we  would  never  dream  of  thinking  or  of 
calling  dramatic  when  they  occur,  may  be  made 
as  interesting  on  the  stage  as  the  most  far-fetched 
situations,  or  the  most  terrific  crises.  For  in- 
stance, it  may  affect  us  keenly  to  leave  for  ever 
a  house  where  we  have  lived  for  many  years.  It 
may  touch  us  to  the  quick  to  see  certain  friends 
off  at  a  railway  station.  But  we  do  not  call  these 
things  dramatic.  They  are  not  dramatic,  but 
they  are  human. 

Tchekov  has  realised  this,  and  has  put  them  on 
the  stage.  He  has  managed  to  send  over  the 
footlights  certain  feelings,  moods,  and  sensations, 
which  we  experience  constantly,  and  out  of  which 
our  life  is  built.  He  has  managed  to  make  the 
departure  of  certain  people  from  a  certain  place, 
and  the  staying  on  of  certain  others  in  the  same 
place,  as  interesting  behind  the  footlights  as  the 
tragic  histories  of  CEdipus  or  Othello,  and  a 
great  deal  more  interesting  than  the  complicated 
struggles  and  problems  in  which  the  characters 
of  a  certain  school  of  modern  dramatists  are 
enmeshed.  Life  as  a  whole  never  presents  itself 
to  us  as  a  definite  mathematical  problem,  which 
needs  immediate  solution,  but  is  rather  composed 
of  a  thousand  nothings,  which  together  make 
something  vitally  important.  Tchekov  has  under- 
stood this,  and  given  us  glimpses  of  these  nothings, 
and  made  whole  plays  out  of  these  nothings. 
272 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

At  first  sight  one  is  tempted  to  say  that  there 
is  no  action  in  the  plays  of  Tchekov.  But  on 
closer  study  one  realises  that  the  action  is  there, 
but  it  is  not  the  kind  usually  sought  after  and 
employed  by  men  who  write  for  the  stage. 
Tchekov  is,  of  course,  not  the  first  dramatic 
writer  who  has  realised  that  the  action  which 
consisted  in  violent  things  happening  to  violent 
people  is  not  a  whit  more  interesting,  perhaps  a 
great  deal  less  interesting,  than  the  changes  and 
the  vicissitudes  which  happen  spiritually  in  the 
soul  of  man.  Moliere  knew  this,  for  Le  Misanthrope 
is  a  play  in  which  nothing  in  the  ordinary  sense 
happens.  Rostand's  L Aiglon  is  a  play  where 
nothing  in  the  ordinary  sense  happens.^  But  in 
these  plays  in  the  extraordinary  sense  everything 
happens.  A  violent  drama  occurs  in  the  soul  of 
the  Misanthrope,  and  likewise  in  that  of  the  Duke 
of  Reichstadt.  So  it  is  in  Tchekov's  plays.  He 
shows  us  the  changes,  the  revolutions,  the  vicis- 
situdes, the  tragedies,  the  comedies,  the  struggles, 
the  conflicts,  the  catastrophes,  that  happen  in  the 
souls  of  men,  but  he  goes  a  step  further  than 
other  dramatists  in  the  way  in  which  he  shows  us 
these  things.  He  shows  us  these  things  as  we 
ourselves  perceive  or  guess  them  in  real  life, 
without  the  help  of  poetic  soliloquies    or   mono- 

^  Not  to  mention  many  modern  French  comedies,  such  as  those 
of  Lemaitre,  Capus,  etc. 


73 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

logues,  without  the  help  of  a  Greek  chorus  or  a 
worldly  raisonneur,  and  without  the  aid  of  startling 
events  which  strip  people  of  their  masks.  He 
shows  us  bits  of  the  everyday  life  of  human  beings 
as  we  see  it,  and  his  pictures  of  ordinary  human 
beings,  rooted  in  certain  circumstances,  and  en- 
gaged in  certain  avocations,  reveal  to  us  further 
glimpses  of  the  life  that  is  going  on  inside  these 
people.  The  older  dramatists,  even  when  they 
deal  exclusively  with  the  inner  life  of  man,  without 
the  aid  of  any  outside  action,  allow  their  creations 
to  take  off  their  masks  and  lay  bare  their  very 
inmost  souls  to  us. 

Tchekov's  characters  never,  of  their  own  accord, 
take  off  their  masks  for  the  benefit  of  the  audience, 
but  they  retain  them  in  exactly  the  same  degree 
as  people  retain  them  in  real  life ;  that  is  to  say, 
we  sometimes  guess  by  a  word,  a  phrase,  a  gesture, 
the  humming  of  a  tune,  or  the  smelling  of  a  flower, 
what  is  going  on  behind  the  mask  ;  at  other  times 
we  see  the  mask  momentarily  torn  off  by  an  out- 
break of  inward  passion,  but  never  by  any  pressure 
of  an  outside  and  artificial  machinery,  never  owing 
to  the  necessity  of  a  situation,  the  demands  of  a 
plot,  or  the  exigencies  of  a  problem  ;  in  fact,  never 
by  any  forces  which  are  not  those  of  life  itself. 
In  Tchekov's  plays,  as  in  real  life,  to  use 
Meredith's  phrase,  "  Passions  spin  the  plot " ;  he 
shows  us  the  delicate  webs  that  reach  from 
274 


THE  PLAYS  OF  AxNTON  TCHEKOV 

soul  to  soul  across  the  trivial   incidents  of  every 
day. 

I  will  now  analyse  in  detail  two  of  the  plays 
of  Tchekov.  The  first  is  a  drama  called  Chaika. 
"Chaika"  means  "Sea-gull."  It  was  the  first 
serious  play  of  Tchekov  that  was  performed ;  and 
it  is  interesting  to  note  that  when  it  was  first 
produced  at  the  Imperial  Theatre  at  St.  Peters- 
burg it  met  with  no  success,  the  reason  being,  no 
doubt,  that  the  actors  did  not  quite  enter  into  the 
spirit  of  the  play.  As  soon  as  it  was  played  at 
Moscow  it  was  triumphantly  successful. 

The  first  act  takes  place  in  the  park  in  the 
estate  belonging  to  Peter  Nikolaievitch  Sorin,  the 
brother  of  a  celebrated  actress,  Irina  Nikolaievna, 
whose  stage  name  is  Arkadina.  Preparations 
have  been  made  in  the  park  for  some  private 
theatricals.  A  small  stage  has  been  erected. 
The  play  about  to  be  represented  has  been  written 
by  Constantine,  the  actress's  son,  who  is  a  young 
man,  twenty-five  years  old.  The  chief  part  is  to 
be  played  by  a  young  girl,  Ina,  the  daughter 
of  a  neighbouring  landowner.  These  two  young 
people  are  in  love  with  each  other.  Irina  is  a 
successful  actress  of  the  more  or  less  conventional 
type.  She  has  talent  and  brains.  "  She  sobs 
over  a  book,"  one  of  the  characters  says  of  her, 
"  and  knows  all  Russian  poetry  by  heart ;  she  looks 
after  the  sick  like  an  angel,  but  you  must  not 
275 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

mention  Eleanora  Duse  in  her  presence,  you  must 
praise  her  only,  and  write  about  her  and  her 
wonderful  acting  in  La  Dame  aux  Camelias.  In 
the  country  she  is  bored,  and  we  all  become  her 
enemies,  we  are  all  guilty.  She  is  superstitious 
and  avaricious."  Constantine,  her  son,  is  full  of 
ideals  with  regard  to  the  reform  of  the  stage ;  he 
finds  the  old  forms  conventional  and  tedious,  he 
is  longing  to  pour  new  wine  into  the  old  skins, 
or  rather  to  invent  new  skins. 

There  is  also  staying  in  the  house  a  well-known 
writer,  about  forty  years  old,  named  Trigorin. 
"  He  is  talented  and  writes  well,"  one  of  the  other 
characters  says  of  him,  "  but  after  reading  Tolstoy 
you  cannot  read  him  at  all."  The  remaining 
characters  are  a  middle-aged  doctor,  named 
Dorn  ;  the  agent  of  the  estate,  a  retired  officer,  his 
wife  and  daughter,  and  a  schoolmaster.  The 
characters  all  assemble  to  witness  Constantine's 
play ;  they  sit  down  in  front  of  the  small  extem- 
porised stage,  which  has  a  curtain  but  no  back 
cloth,  since  this  is  provided  by  nature  in  the 
^ape  of  a  distant  lake  enclosed  by  trees.  The 
sun  has  set,  and  it  is  twilight.  Constantine  begs 
his  guests  to  lend  their  attention.  The  curtain  is 
raised,  revealing  a  view  of  the  lake  with  the  moon 
shining  above  the  horizon,  and  reflected  in  the 
water.  Ina  is  discovered  seated  on  a  large  rock 
dressed  all  in  white.  She  begins  to  speak  a  kind 
276 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

of  prose  poem,  an  address  of  the  Spirit  of  the 
Universe  to  the  dead  world  on  which  there  is 
supposed  to  be  no  longer  any  living  creature. 

Arkadina  (the  actress)  presently  interrupts  the 
monologue  by  saying  softly  to  her  neighbour, 
*'  This  is  decadent  stuff."  The  author,  in  a  tone 
of  imploring  reproach,  says,  "  Mamma  ! "  The 
monologue  continues,  the  Spirit  of  the  World 
speaks  of  his  obstinate  struggle  with  the  devil, 
the  origin  of  material  force.  There  is  a  pause. 
Far  off  on  the  lake  two  red  dots  appear.  "  Here," 
says  the  Spirit  of  the  World,  "  is  my  mighty 
adversary,  the  devil.  I  see  his  terrible  glowing 
eyes."  Arkadina  once  more  interrupts,  and  the 
following  dialogue  ensues : 

Arkadina:  It  smells  of  sulphur;  is  that 
necessary  ? 

Constantine :   Yes. 

Arkadina  {laughing) :  Yes,  that  is  an  effect. 

Constantine :   Mamma ! 

Ina  {continuing  to  recite) :  He  is  lonely  without 
man. 

Paulin  {the  wife  of  the  agent)  :  ( To  the  doctor) : 
You  have  taken  off  your  hat.  Put  it  on  again, 
you  will  catch  cold. 

Arkadina-.  The  doctor  has  taken  off  his 
hat  to  the  devil,  the  father  of  the  material 
universe. 

Constantine   {losing   his    temper) :    The    play's 
over.      Enough !      Curtain ! 
277 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

Arkadina  :  Why  are  you  angry  ? 

Constantine :  Enough !  Pull  down  the  cur- 
tain !  (The  curtain  is  let  down.)  I  am  sorry  I 
forgot,  it  is  only  certain  chosen  people  that  may 
write  plays  and  act.  I  infringed  the  monopoly,  I 
.  .  .  {He  tries  to  say  somethings  but  waves  his 
arm  and  goes  out) 

Arkadina:  What  is  the  matter  with  you  ? 

Soidn  {Iter  brother) :  My  dear,  you  should  be 
more  gentle  with  the  amour  propre  of  the  young. 

Arkadina:  What  did  I  say  to  him? 

Sorin  :  You  offended  him. 

Arkadina  :  He  said  himself  it  was  a  joke,  and 
I  took  his  play  as  a  joke. 

Sorin :  All  the  same  .  .  . 

Arkadina:  Now  it  appears  he  has  written  a 
masterpiece  !  A  masterpiece,  if  you  please  !  So 
he  arranged  this  play,  and  made  a  smell  of 
sulphur,  not  as  a  joke,  but  as  a  manifesto  !  He 
wished  to  teach  us  how  to  write  and  how  to  act. 
One  gets  tired  of  this  in  the  long-run, — these  in- 
sinuations against  me,  these  everlasting  pin-pricks, 
they  are  enough  to  tire  any  one.  He  is  a 
capricious  and  conceited  boy ! 

Sorin :   He  wished  to  give  you  pleasure. 

Arkadina:  Really?  Then  why  did  he  not 
choose  some  ordinary  play,  and  why  did  he  force 
us  to  listen  to  this  decadent  rubbish  ?  If  it  is  a 
joke  I  do  not  mind  listening  to  rubbish,  but  he 
has  the  pretension  to  invent  new  forms,  and  tries 
to  inaugurate  a  new  era  in  art;  and  I  do  not  think 
the  form  is  new,  it  is  simply  bad. 
278 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

Presently  Ina  appears  ;  they  compliment  her  on 
her  performance.  Arkadina  tells  her  she  ought 
to  go  on  to  the  stage,  to  which  she  answers  that 
that  is  her  dream.  She  is  introduced  to  Trigorin 
the  author  :  this  makes  her  shy.  She  has  read 
his  works,  she  is  overcome  at  seeing  the  celebrity 
face  to  face.  "  Wasn't  it  an  odd  play  ?  "  she  asks 
Trigorin.  "  I  did  not  understand  it,"  he  answers, 
"  but  I  looked  on  with  pleasure — your  acting  was 
so  sincere,  and  the  scenery  was  beautiful."  Ina 
says  she  must  go  home,  and  they  all  go  into  the 
house  except  the  doctor.  Constantine  appears 
again,  and  the  doctor  tells  him  that  he  liked  the 
play,  and  congratulates  him.  The  young  man  is 
deeply  touched.  He  is  in  a  state  of  great  nervous 
excitement.  As  soon  as  he  learns  that  Ina  has 
gone  he  says  he  must  go  after  her  at  once. 
The  doctor  is  left  alone.  Masha,  the  daughter  of 
the  agent,  enters  and  makes  him  a  confession :  "  I 
don't  love  my  father,"  she  says,  "  but  I  have 
confidence  in  you.  Help  me."  "  What  is  the 
matter  ?  "  he  asks.  "  I  am  suffering,"  she  answers, 
"  and  nobody  knows  my  suffering.  I  love 
Constantine."  "  How  nervous  these  people  are," 
says  the  doctor,  ''  nerves,  all  nerves  !  and  what  a 
quantity  of  love.  Oh,  enchanted  lake  !  But 
what  can  I  do  for  you,  my  child,  what,  what  ? " 
and  the  curtain  comes  down. 

The  second  act  is  in  the  garden  of  the  same 
279 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

estate.  It  is  a  hot  noon.  Arkadina  has  decided 
to  travel  to  Moscow.  The  agent  comes  and  tells 
her  that  all  the  workmen  are  busy  harvesting,  and 
that  there  are  no  horses  to  take  her  to  the  station. 
She  tells  him  to  hire  horses  in  the  village,  or  else 
she  will  walk.  "  In  that  case,"  the  agent  replies, 
"  I  give  notice,  and  you  can  get  a  new  agent." 
She  goes  out  in  a  passion.  Presently  Constantlne 
appears  bearing  a  dead  sea-gull ;  he  lays  it  at 
Ina's  feet. 

Ina :  What  does  this  mean  ? 

Constantine  :  I  shot  this  sea-gull  to-day  to  my 
shame.      I  throw  it  at  your  feet. 

Ina  :  What  is  the  matter  with  you  ? 

Constantine  :  I  shall  soon  shoot  myself  in  the 
same  way. 

Ina :   I  do  not  recognise  you. 

Constantine :  Yes,  some  time  after  I  have 
ceased  to  recognise  you.  You  have  changed 
towards  me,  your  look  is  cold,  my  presence  makes 
you  uncomfortable. 

Ifia :  During  these  last  days  you  have  be- 
come irritable,  and  speak  in  an  unintelligible  way, 
in  symbols.  I  suppose  this  sea-gull  is  a  symbol. 
Forgive  me,  I  am  too  simple  to  understand  you. 

Constantine :  It  all  began  on  that  evening 
when  my  play  was  such  a  failure.  Women 
cannot  forgive  failure.  I  burnt  it  all  to  the  last 
page.  Oh,  if  you  only  knew  how  unhappy  I  am  ! 
Your  coldness  is  terrifying,  incredible !  It  is  just 
as  if  I  awoke,  and  suddenly  saw  that  this  lake 
280 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

was  dry,  or  had  disappeared  under  the  earth. 
You  have  just  said  you  were  too  simple  to  under- 
stand me.  Oh,  what  is  there  to  understand  ? 
My  play  was  a  failure,  you  despise  my  work,  you 
already  consider  that  I  am  a  thing  of  no  account, 
like  so  many  others  !  How  well  I  understand  that, 
how  well  I  understand  !  It  is  as  if  there  were  a 
nail  in  my  brain  ;  may  it  be  cursed,  together  with 
the  amour propre  which  is  sucking  my  blood,  suck- 
ing it  like  a  snake  !  {He  sees  Trigorin^  who  enters 
reading  a  book.)  Here  comes  the  real  genius. 
He  walks  towards  us  like  a  Hamlet,  and  with  a 
book  too.  "  Words,  words,  words."  This  sun  is 
not  yet  come  to  you,  and  you  are  already  smiling, 
your  looks  have  melted  in  its  rays.  I  will  not  be 
in  your  way.     {He  goes  out  rapidly') 

There  follows  a  conversation  between  Trigorin 
and  Ina,  during  which  she  says  she  would  like  to 
know  what  it  feels  like  to  be  a  famous  author. 
She  talks  of  his  interesting  life. 

Trigorin  :  What  is  there  so  very  wonderful 
about  it  ?  Like  a  monomaniac  who,  for  instance, 
is  always  thinking  day  and  night  of  the  moon,  I 
am  pursued  by  one  thought  which  I  cannot  get 
rid  of,  I  must  write,  I  must  write,  I  must  ...  I 
have  scarcely  finished  a  story,  when  for  some  reason 
or  another  I  must  write  a  second,  and  then  a  third, 
and  then  a  fourth.  I  write  uninterruptedly,  I 
cannot  do  otherwise.  What  is  there  so  wonderful 
and  splendid  in  this,  I  ask  you  ?  Oh,  it  is  a 
cruel  life  !  Look,  I  get  excited  with  you,  and  all 
281 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

the  time  I  am  remembering  that  an  unfinished 
story  is  waiting  for  me.  I  see  a  cloud  which  is 
like  a  pianoforte,  and  I  at  once  think  that  I  must 
remember  to  say  somewhere  in  the  story  that 
there  is  a  cloud  like  a  pianoforte. 

Ina  :  But  does  not  your  inspiration  and  the  pro- 
cess of  creation  give  you  great  and  happy  moments  ? 

Trigorin :  Yes,  when  I  write  it  is  pleasant,  and 
it  is  nice  to  correct  proofs  ;  but  as  soon  as  the 
thing  is  published,  I  cannot  bear  it,  and  I  already 
see  that  it  is  not  at  all  what  I  meant,  that  it  is  a 
mistake,  that  I  should  not  have  written  it  at  all, 
and  I  am  vexed  and  horribly  depressed.  The 
public  reads  it,  and  says :  "  Yes,  pretty,  full  of 
talent,  very  nice,  but  how  different  from  Tolstoy  !  " 
or,  "  Yes,  a  fine  thing,  but  how  far  behind  Fathers 
and  Sons  ;  Tourgeniev  is  better."  And  so,  until  I 
die,  it  will  always  be  "  pretty  and  full  of  talent," 
never  anything  more ;  and  when  I  die  my  friends 
as  they  pass  my  grave  will  say :  "  Here  lies 
Trigorin,  he  was  a  good  writer,  but  he  did  not 
write  as  well  as  Tourgeniev." 

Ina  tells  him  that  whatever  he  may  appear  to 
himself,  to  others  he  appears  great  and  wonderful. 
For  the  joy  of  being  a  writer  or  an  artist,  she 
says,  she  would  bear  the  hate  of  her  friends,  want, 
disappointment ;  she  would  live  in  an  attic  and  eat 
dry  crusts.  "  I  would  suffer  from  my  own  im- 
perfections, but  in  return  I  should  demand  fame, 
real  noisy  fame."  Here  the  voice  of  Arka- 
dina  is  heard  calling  Trigorin.  He  observes  the 
282 


THE   PLAYS   OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

sea-gull ;  she  tells  him  that  Constantine  killed  it. 
Trigorin  makes  a  note  in  his  notebook.  "  What 
are  you  writing?"  she  says.  "An  idea  has 
occurred  to  me,"  he  answers,  "  an  idea  for  a  short 
story :  On  the  banks  of  a  lake  a  young  girl  lives 
from  her  infancy  onwards.  She  loves  the  lake 
like  a  sea-gull,  she  is  happy  and  free  like  a  sea-gull ; 
but  unexpectedly  a  man  comes  and  sees  her,  and 
out  of  mere  idleness  kills  her,  just  like  this  sea- 
gull." Here  Arkadina  again  calls  out  that  they 
are  not  going  to  Moscow  after  all.  This  is  the 
end  of  the  second  act. 

At  the  third  act,  Arkadina  is  about  to  leave  the 
country  for  Moscow.  Things  have  come  to  a 
crisis.  Ina  has  fallen  in  love  with  the  author, 
and  Constantine's  jealousy  and  grief  have  reached 
such  a  point  that  he  has  tried  to  kill  himself  and 
failed,  and  now  he  has  challenged  Trigorin  to  a 
duel.  The  latter  has  taken  no  notice  of  this,  and 
is  about  to  leave  for  Moscow  with  Arkadina. 
Ina  begs  him  before  he  goes  to  say  good-bye 
to  her.  Arkadina  discusses  with  her  brother  her 
son's  strange  and  violent  behaviour.  He  points 
out  that  the  youth's  position  is  intolerable.  He 
is  a  clever  boy,  full  of  talent,  and  he  is  obliged  to 
live  in  the  country  without  any  money,  without  a 
situation.  He  is  ashamed  of  this,  and  afraid  of 
his  idleness.  In  any  case,  he  tells  his  sister,  she 
ought  to  give  him  some  money,  he  has  not  even 
283 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

got  an  overcoat ;  to  which  she  answers  that  she 
has  not  got  any  money.  She  is  an  artist,  and 
needs  every  penny  for  her  own  expenses.  Her 
brother  scoffs  at  this,  and  she  gets  annoyed.  A 
scene  follows  between  the  mother  and  the  son, 
which  begins  by  an  exchange  of  loving  and  tender 
words,  and  which  finishes  in  a  violent  quarrel. 
The  mother  is  putting  a  new  bandage  on  his 
head,  on  the  place  where  he  had  shot  himself. 
"  During  the  last  few  days,"  says  Constantine,  "  I 
have  loved  you  as  tenderly  as  when  I  was  a  child  ; 
but  why  do  you  submit  to  the  influence  of  that 
man  ?  " — meaning  Trigorin.  And  out  of  this  the 
quarrel  arises.  Constantine  says,  "  You  wish  me 
to  consider  him  a  genius.  His  works  make  me 
sick."  To  which  his  mother  answers,  "  That  is 
jealousy.  People  who  have  no  talent  and  who 
are  pretentious,  have  nothing  better  to  do  than  to 
abuse  those  who  have  real  talent."  Here  Con- 
stantine flies  into  a  passion,  tears  the  bandage  off 
his  head,  and  cries  out,  "  You  people  only  admit 
and  recognise  what  you  do  yourselves.  You 
trample  and  stifle  everything  else  !  "  Then  his 
rage  dies  out,  he  cries  and  asks  forgiveness,  and 
says,  "  If  you  only  knew,  I  have  lost  everything. 
She  no  longer  loves  me  ;  I  can  no  longer  write ; 
all  my  hopes  are  dead  ! "  They  are  once  more 
reconciled.  Only  Constantine  begs  that  he  may  be 
allowed  to  keep  out  of  Trigorin's  sight.  Trigorin 
284 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

comes  to  Arkadina,  and  proposes  that  they  should 
remain  in  the  country.  Arkadina  says  that  she 
knows  why  he  wishes  to  remain ;  he  is  in  love 
with  Ina.  He  admits  this,  and  asks  to  be  set 
free. 

Up  to  this  point  in  the  play  there  had  not 
been  a  syllable  to  tell  us  what  were  the  relations 
between  Arkadina  and  Trigorin,  and  yet  the 
spectator  who  sees  this  play  guesses  from  the  first 
that  he  is  her  lover.  She  refuses  to  let  him  go, 
and  by  a  somewhat  histrionic  declaration  of  love 
cleverly  mixed  with  flattery  and  common  sense 
she  easily  brings  him  round,  and  he  is  like  wax 
in  her  fingers.  He  settles  to  go.  They  leave  for 
Moscow ;  but  before  they  leave,  Trigorin  has  a 
short  interview  with  Ina,  in  which  she  tells  him 
that  she  has  decided  to  leave  her  home  to  go  on 
the  stage,  and  to  follow  him  to  Moscow.  Trigorin 
gives  her  his  address  in  Moscow.  Outside — the 
whole  of  this  act  takes  place  in  the  dining-room — 
we  hear  the  noise  and  bustle  of  people  going 
away.  Arkadina  is  already  in  the  carriage. 
Trigorin  and  Ina  say  good-bye  to  each  other,  he 
gives  her  a  long  kiss. 

Between  the  third  and  fourth  acts  two  years 
elapse.  We  are  once  more  in  the  home  of  Arka- 
dina's  brother.  Constantine  has  become  a  cele- 
brated writer.  Ina  has  gone  on  the  stage  and 
proved  a  failure.  She  went  to  Moscow ;  Trigorin 
285 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

loved  her  for  a  while,  and  then  ceased  to  love  her. 
A  child  was  born.  He  returned  to  his  former 
love,  and  in  his  weakness,  played  a  double  game 
on  both  sides.  She  is  now  in  the  town,  but  her 
father  will  not  receive  her.  Arkadina  arrives  with 
Trigorin.  She  has  been  summoned  from  town 
because  her  brother  is  ill.  Everything  is  going 
on  as  it  was  two  years  ago.  Arkadina,  the  agent, 
and  the  doctor  sit  down  to  a  game  of  Lotto  before 
dinner.  Arkadina  tells  of  her  triumphs  in  the 
provincial  theatres,  of  the  ovations  she  received, 
of  the  dresses  she  wore.  The  doctor  asks  her  if 
she  is  proud  of  her  son  being  an  author.  "  Just 
fancy,"  she  replies,  "  I  have  not  yet  read  his  books, 
I  have  never  had  time  !  "  They  go  in  to  supper. 
Constantine  says  he  is  not  hungry,  and  is  left 
alone.  Somebody  knocks  at  the  glass  door 
opening  into  the  garden.  Constantine  opens  it ; 
it  is  Ina.  Ina  tells  her  story ;  and  now  she  has 
got  an  engagement  in  some  small  provincial  town, 
and  is  starting  on  the  following  day.  Constantine 
declares  vehemently  that  he  loves  her  as  much  as 
ever.  He  cursed  her,  he  hated  her,  he  tore  up 
her  letters  and  photographs,  but  every  moment 
he  was  forced  to  admit  to  himself  that  he  was 
bound  to  her  for  ever.  He  could  never  cease  to 
love  her.  He  begs  her  either  to  remain,  or  to  let 
him  follow  her.  She  takes  up  her  hat,  she  must 
go.  She  says  she  is  a  wandering  sea-gull,  and 
286 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

that  she  is  very  tired.  From  the  dining-room  are 
heard  the  voices  of  Arkadina  and  Trigorin.  She 
listens,  rushes  to  the  door,  and  looks  through 
the  keyhole.  "  He  is  here,  too,"  she  says,  "  do  not 
tell  him  anything.  I  love  him,  I  love  him  more 
than  ever."  She  goes  out  through  the  garden. 
Constantine  tears  up  all  his  MSS.  and  goes  into 
the  next  room.  Arkadina  and  the  others  come 
out  of  the  dining-room,  and  sit  down  once  more 
to  the  card-table  to  play  Lotto.  The  agent  brings 
to  Trigorin  the  stuffed  sea-gull  which  Constantine 
had  shot  two  years  ago,  and  which  had  been  the 
starting-point  of  Trigorin's  love  episode  with  Ina. 
He  has  forgotten  all  about  it ;  he  does  not  even 
remember  that  the  sea-gull  episode  ever  took  place. 
A  noise  like  a  pistol  shot  is  heard  outside.  "  What 
is  that  ?  "  says  Arkadina  in  fright.  "  It  is  nothing," 
replies  the  doctor,  "  one  of  my  medicine  bottles 
has  probably  burst."  He  goes  into  the  next 
room,  and  returns  half  a  minute  later.  "  It  was 
as  I  thought,"  he  says,  "  my  ether  bottle  has  burst." 
"  It  frightened  me,"  says  Arkadina,  "  it  reminded 
me  of  how  .  .  ."  The  doctor  turns  over  the 
leaves  of  the  newspaper.  He  then  says  to 
Trigorin,  "  Two  months  ago  there  was  an  article 
in  this  Review  written  from  America.  I  wanted 
to  ask  you  .  .  ."  He  takes  Trigorin  aside, 
and  then  whispers  to  him,  "  Take  Irina  Nikol- 
aievna  away  as  soon  as  possible.  The  fact  of 
287 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

the    matter   is   that    Constantine   has    shot  him- 
self." 

Of  all  the  plays  of  Tchekov,  Chaika  is  the  one 
which  most  resembles  ordinary  plays,  or  the  plays 
of  ordinary  dramatists.  It  has,  no  doubt,  many 
of  Tchekov's  special  characteristics,  but  it  does 
not  show  them  developed  to  their  full  extent. 
Besides  which,  the  subject  is  more  dramatic  than 
that  of  his  other  plays  ;  there  is  a  conflict  in  it — 
the  conflict  between  the  son  and  the  mother, 
between  the  older  and  the  younger  generation, 
the  older  generation  represented  by  Trigorin  and 
the  actress,  the  younger  generation  by  Constan- 
tine. The  character  of  the  actress  is  drawn  with 
great  subtlety.  Her  real  love  for  her  son  is  made 
just  as  plain  as  her  absolute  inability  to  ap- 
preciate his  talent  and  his  cleverness.  She  is  a 
mixture  of  kindness,  common  sense,  avarice, 
and  vanity.  Equally  subtle  is  the  character  of 
the  author,  with  his  utter  want  of  wit ;  his 
absorption  in  the  writing  of  short  stories ;  his 
fundamental  weakness  ;  his  egoism,  which  pre- 
vents him  recognising  the  existence  of  any  work 
but  his  own,  but  which  has  no  tinge  of  ill-nature 
or  malice  in  it.  When  he  returns  in  the  last  act, 
he  compliments  Constantine  on  his  success,  and 
brings  him  a  Review  in  which  there  is  a  story 
by  the  young  man.  Constantine  subsequently 
notices  that  in  the  Review  the  only  pages 
288 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

which    are     cut    contain    a     story    by    Trigorin 
himself. 

If  Chaika  is  the  most  dramatically  effective 
of  Tchekov's  plays,  the  most  characteristic  is 
perhaps  The  Cherry  Garden.  It  is  notably 
characteristic  in  the  symbolical  and  historical 
sense,  for  it  depicts  for  us  the  causes  and  signifi- 
cance of  the  decline  of  the  well-born,  landed 
gentry  in  Russia. 

A  slightly  Bohemian  lady  belonging  to  this  class, 
Ranievskaia — I  will  call  her  Madame  Ranievskaia 
for  the  sake  of  convenience,  since  her  Christian 
name  "  Love "  has  no  equivalent,  as  a  name,  in 
English — is  returning  to  her  country  estate  with 
her  brother  Leonidas  after  an  absence  of  five  years. 
She  has  spent  this  time  abroad  in  Nice  and  Paris. 
Her  affairs  and  those  of  her  brother  are  in  a 
hopeless  state.  They  are  heavily  in  debt.  This 
country  place  has  been  the  home  of  her  child- 
hood, and  it  possesses  a  magnificent  cherry 
orchard.      It  is  in  the  south  of  Russia. 

In  the  first  act  we  see  her  return  to  the  home 
of  her  childhood  —  she  and  her  brother,  her 
daughter,  seventeen  years  old,  and  her  adopted 
daughter.  It  is  the  month  of  May.  The  cherry 
orchard  is  in  full  blossom  ;  we  see  it  through  the 
windows  of  the  old  nursery,  which  is  the  scene 
of  the  first  act.  The  train  arrives  at  dawn,  before 
sunrise.  A  neighbour  is  there  to  meet  them, 
T  289 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

a  rich  merchant  called  Lopachin.  They  arrive 
with  their  governess  and  their  servant,  and  they 
have  been  met  at  the  station  by  another  neigh- 
bouring landowner.  And  here  we  see  a  thing 
I  have  never  seen  on  the  stage  before  :  a  render- 
ing of  the  exact  atmosphere  that  hangs  about 
such  an  event  as  (a)  the  arrival  of  people  from 
a  journey,  and  (d)  the  return  of  a  family  to  its 
home  from  which  it  has  long  been  absent.  We 
see  at  a  glance  that  Madame  Ranievskaia  and 
her  brother  are  in  all  practical  matters  like 
children.  They  are  hopelessly  casual  and  vague. 
They  take  everything  lightly  and  carelessly,  like 
birds ;  they  are  convinced  that  something  will 
turn  up  to  extricate  them  from  their  difficulties. 

The  merchant,  who  is  a  nice,  plain,  careful, 
practical,  but  rather  vulgar  kind  of  person,  is  a 
millionaire,  and,  what  is  more,  he  is  the  son  of 
a  peasant ;  he  was  born  in  the  village,  and  his 
father  was  a  serf.  He  puts  the  practical  situation 
very  clearly  before  them.  The  estate  is  hopelessly 
overloaded  with  debt,  and  unless  these  debts  are 
paid  within  six  months,  the  estate  will  be  sold  by 
auction.  But  there  is,  he  points  out,  a  solution 
to  the  matter.  "  As  you  already  know,"  he  says 
to  them,  "your  cherry  orchard  will  be  sold  to 
pay  your  debts.  The  auction  is  fixed  for  the 
22nd  of  August,  but  do  not  be  alarmed,  there  is  a 
way  out  of  the  difficulty.  .  .  .  This  is  my  plan. 
290 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

Your  estate  is  only  i  5  miles  from  the  town,  the 
railway  is  quite  close,  and  if  your  cherry  orchard 
and  the  land  by  the  river  is  cut  up  into  villa 
holdings,  and  let  for  villas,  you  will  get  at  the 
least  25,000  roubles  (^2500)  a  year."  To  which 
the  brother  replies,  "  What  nonsense  !  "  "  You 
will  get,"  the  merchant  repeats,  "  at  the  very 
least  twenty-five  roubles  a  year  a  desiatin," — a 
desiatin  is  about  two  acres  and  a  half:  much  the 
same  as  the  French  hectare, — *'  and  by  the  autumn, 
if  you  make  the  announcement  now,  you  will  not 
have  a  single  particle  of  land  left.  In  a  word, 
I  congratulate  you ;  you  are  saved.  The  site 
is  splendid,  only,  of  course,  it  wants  several 
improvements.  For  instance,  all  these  old  build- 
ings must  be  destroyed,  and  this  house,  which  is 
no  use  at  all,  the  old  orchard  must  be  cut 
down." 

Madame  Ranievskaia :  Cut  down  ?  My  dear 
friend,  forgive  me,  you  do  not  understand  any- 
thing at  all !  If  in  the  whole  district  there  is 
anything  interesting,  not  to  say  remarkable,  it 
is  this  orchard. 

Lopachin :  The  orchard  is  remarkable  simply 
on  account  of  its  size. 

Leonidas :  The  orchard  is  mentioned  in  the 
Encyclopaedia. 

Lopachin :  If  we  do  not  think  of  a  way  out  of 
the  matter  and  come  to  some  plan,  on  the  22nd 
of  August  the  cherry  orchard  and  the  whole 
291 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

property  will  be  sold  by  auction.       Make  up  your 
minds ;  there  is  no  other  way  out,  I   promise  you." 

But  it  is  no  good  his  saying  anything.  They 
merely  reply,  "  What  nonsense  !  "  They  regard 
the  matter  of  splitting  up  their  old  home  into 
villas  as  a  sheer  impossibility.  And  this  is  the 
whole  subject  of  the  play.  The  merchant  con- 
tinues during  the  second  act  to  insist  on  the  only 
practical  solution  of  their  difficulties,  and  they 
likewise  persist  in  saying  this  solution  is  madness, 
that  it  is  absolutely  impossible.  They  cannot 
bring  themselves  to  think  of  their  old  home  being 
turned  into  a  collection  of  villas  ;  they  keep  on 
saying  that  something  will  turn  up,  an  old  aunt 
will  die  and  leave  them  a  legacy,  or  something 
of  that  kind   will  happen. 

In  the  third  act,  the  day  of  the  auction  has 
arrived,  there  is  a  dance  going  on  in  the  house. 
The  impression  is  one  of  almost  intolerable  human 
sadness,  because  we  know  that  nothing  has  turned 
up,  we  know  that  the  whole  estate  will  be  sold. 
The  whole  picture  is  one  of  the  ending  of  a  world. 
At  the  dance  there  are  only  the  people  in  the 
village,  the  stationmaster,  the  post-office  officials, 
and  so  forth.  The  servant  they  have  brought  from 
abroad  gives  notice.  An  old  servant,  who  belongs 
to  the  house,  and  is  in  the  last  stage  of  senile 
decay,  wanders  about  murmuring  of  old  times  and 
292 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

past  brilliance.  The  guests  dance  quadrilles 
through  all  the  rooms.  Leonidas  has  gone  to  the 
auction,  and  Madame  Ranievskaia  sits  waiting  in 
hopeless  suspense  for  the  news  of  the  result. 
At  last  he  comes  back,  pale  and  tired,  and  too 
depressed  to  speak.  The  merchant  also  comes 
triumphantly  into  the  room  ;  he  is  slightly  intoxi- 
cated, and  with  a  triumphant  voice  he  announces 
that  he  has  bought  the  cherry  garden. 

In  the  last  act,  we  see  them  leave  their  house 
for  ever,  all  the  furniture  has  been   packed  up,  all 
the   things    which   for   them   are  so   full   of    little 
associations  ;  the  pictures  are  off  the  walls,  the  bare 
trees  of  the  cherry  garden — for  it  is  now  autumn — 
are  already  being  cut  down,  and  they  are  starting 
to  begin  a  new  life  and   to   leave  their   old   home 
for  ever.     The  old  house,  so  charming,  so  full  of 
old-world  dignity  and  simplicity,  will   be   pulled 
down,  and   make  place   for  neat,  surburban   little 
villas  to  be  inhabited  by  the  new  class  which  has 
arisen  in  Russia.      Formerly  there  were  only  gen- 
tlemen and  peasants,  now  there  is  the  self-made 
man,  who,  being  infinitely  more  practical,  pushes 
out    the    useless    and    unpractical    gentleman    to 
make  way  for  himself      The  pathos  and  natural- 
ness  of  this   last   act   are   extraordinary.      Every 
incident  that  we  know  so  well  in  these  moments 
of   departure    is    noted    and    rendered.      The   old 
servant,  who  belongs  to  the  house,  is  supposed  to 
293 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

be  in  the  hospital,  and  is  not  there  to  say  good- 
bye to  them ;  but  when  they  are  all  gone,  he 
appears  and  closes  the  shutters,  saying,  "  It  is  all 
closed,  they  are  gone,  they  forgot  me  ;  it  doesn't 
matter,  I  will  sit  here.  Leonidas  Andreevitch 
probably  forgot  his  cloak,  and  only  went  in  his 
light  overcoat,  I  wasn't  there  to  see."  And  he 
lies  motionless  in  the  darkened,  shuttered  room, 
while  from  outside  comes  the  sound  of  the  felling 
of  the  cherry  orchard. 

Of  course,  it  is  quite  impossible  in  a  short 
analysis  to  give  any  idea  of  the  real  nature  of 
this  play,  which  is  a  tissue  of  small  details,  every 
one  of  which  tells.  Every  character  in  it  is  living  ; 
Leonidas,  the  brother,  who  makes  foolish  speeches 
and  is  constantly  regretting  them  afterwards ;  the 
plain  and  practical  merchant ;  the  good-natured 
neighbour  who  borrows  money  and  ultimately  pays 
it  back ;  the  governess ;  the  clerk  in  the  estate 
office ;  the  servants,  the  young  student  who  is 
in  love  with  the  daughter, — we  learn  to  knov/ 
all  these  people  as  well  as  we  know  our  own 
friends  and  relations,  and  they  reveal  themselves 
as  people  do  in  real  life  by  means  of  a  lifelike 
representation  of  the  conversation  of  human  beings. 
The  play  is  historical  and  symbolical,  because  it 
shows  us  why  the  landed  gentry  in  Russia  has 
ceased  to  have  any-  importance,  and  how  these 
amiable,  unpractical,  casual  people  must  necessarily 
294 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

go  under,  when  they  are  faced  with  a  strong 
energetic  class  of  rich,  self-made  men  who  are  the 
sons  of  peasants.  Technically  the  play  is  extra- 
ordinarily interesting ;  there  is  no  conflict  of  wills 
in  it,  nothing  which  one  could  properly  call  action 
or  drama,  and  yet  it  never  ceases  to  be  interesting  ; 
and  the  reason  of  this  is  that  the  conversation, 
the  casual  remarks  of  the  characters,  which  seem 
to  be  about  nothing,  and  to  be  put  there  anyhow, 
have  always  a  definite  purpose.  Every  casual 
remark  serves  to  build  up  the  architectonic  edifice 
which  is  the  play.  The  structure  is  built,  so  to 
speak,  in  air ;  it  is  a  thing  of  atmosphere,  but  it 
is  built  nevertheless  with  extreme  care,  and  the 
result  when  interpreted,  as  it  is  interpreted  at 
Moscow  by  the  actors  of  the  artistic  theatre, 
is  a  stage  triumph. 

The  three  other  most  important  plays  of  Tchekov 
are  Ivanoff^  Three  Sisters,  and  Uncle  Vania^ — the 
latter  play  has  been  well  translated  into  German. 

Three  Sisters  is  the  most  melancholy  of  all 
Tchekov's  plays.  It  represents  the  intense 
monotony  of  provincial  life,  the  grey  life  which  is 
suddenly  relieved  by  a  passing  flash,  and  then 
rendered  doubly  grey  by  the  disappearance  of  that 
flash.  The  action  takes  place  in  a  provincial 
town.  A  regiment  of  artillery  is  in  garrison  there. 
One  of  the  three  sisters,  Masha,  has  married  a 
schoolmaster ;  the  two  others,  Irina  and  Olga,  are 
295 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

living  in  the  house  of  their  brother,  who  is  a 
budding  professor.  Their  father  is  dead.  Olga 
teaches  in  a  provincial  school  all  day,  and  gives 
private  lessons  in  the  evening.  Irina  is  employed 
in  the  telegraph  office.  They  have  both  only  one 
dream  and  longing,  and  that  is  to  get  away  from 
the  provincial  corner  in  which  they  live,  and  to 
settle  in  Moscow.  They  only  stay  on  Masha's 
account.  Masha's  husband  is  a  kind  and  well- 
meaning,  but  excessively  tedious  schoolmaster, 
who  is  continually  reciting  Latin  tags.  When 
Masha  married  him  she  was  only  eighteen,  and 
thought  he  was  the  cleverest  man  in  the  world. 
She  subsequently  discovered  that  he  was  the 
kindest,  but  not  the  cleverest  man  in  the  world. 
The  only  thing  which  relieves  the  tedium  of  this 
provincial  life  is  the  garrison. 

When  the  play  begins,  we  hear  that  a  new 
commander  has  been  appointed  to  the  battery,  a 
man  of  forty  called  Vershinin.  He  is  married, 
has  two  children,  but  his  wife  is  half  crazy.  The 
remaining  officers  in  the  battery  are  Baron 
Tuzenbach,  a  lieutenant ;  Soleny,  a  major ;  and 
two  other  lieutenants.  Tuzenbach  is  in  love 
with  Irina,  and  wishes  to  marry  her  ;  she  is  willing 
to  marry  him,  but  she  is  not  in  the  least  in  love 
with  him,  and  tells  him  so.  Masha  falls  passion- 
ately in  love  with  Vershinin.  The  major,  Soleny, 
is  jealous  of  Tuzenbach.  Then  suddenly  while 
296 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

these  things  are  going  on,  the  battery  is  transferred 
from  the  town  to  the  other  end  of  Russia.  On  the 
morning  it  leaves  the  town,  Soleny  challenges  the 
Baron  to  a  duel,  and  kills  him.  The  play  ends 
with  the  three  sisters  being  left  alone.  Vershinin 
says  a  passionate  good-bye  to  Masha,  who  is  in 
floods  of  tears,  and  does  not  disguise  her  grief 
from  her  husband.  He,  in  the  most  pathetic  way 
conceivable,  tries  to  console  her,  while  the  cheerful 
music  of  the  band  is  heard  gradually  getting 
fainter  and  fainter  in  the  distance.  Irina  has 
been  told  of  the  death  of  the  Baron,  and  the  sad 
thing  about  this  is  that  she  does  not  really  care. 
The  three  sisters  are  left  to  go  on  working,  to 
continue  their  humdrum  existence  in  the  little 
provincial  town,  to  teach  the  children  in  the  school ; 
the  only  thing  which  brought  some  relief  to  their 
monotonous  existence,  and  to  one  of  the  sisters 
the  passion  of  her  life,  is  taken  away  from  them, 
and  the  departure  is  made  manifest  to  them  by 
the  strains  of  the  cheerful  military  band. 

I  have  never  seen  anything  on  the  stage  so 
poignantly  melancholy  as  this  last  scene.  In 
this  play,  as  well  as  in  others,  Tchekov,  by  the 
way  he  presents  you  certain  fragments  of  people's 
lives,  manages  to  open  a  window  on  the  whole  of 
their  life.  In  this  play  of  Three  Sisters  we  get 
four  glimpses.  A  birthday  party  in  the  first  act ; 
an  ordinary  evening  in  the  second  act ;  in  the 
297 


LANDMARKS  IN  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE 

third  act  a  night  of  excitement  owing  to  a  fire  in 
the  town,  and  it  is  on  this  night  that  the  love 
affair  of  Vershinin  and  Masha  culminates  in  a 
crisis ;  and  in  the  fourth  act  the  departure  of  the 
regiment.  Yet  these  four  fragments  give  us  an 
insight,  and  open  a  window  on  to  the  whole  life 
of  these  people,  and,  in  fact,  on  to  the  lives  of 
many  thousand  people  who  have  led  this  life  in 
Russia. 

Tchekov's  plays  are  as  interesting  to  read  as 
the  work  of  any  first-rate  novelist.  But  in 
reading  them,  it  is  impossible  to  guess  how 
effective  they  are  on  the  stage,  the  delicate  suc- 
cession of  subtle  shades  and  half-tones,  of  hints, 
of  which  they  are  composed,  the  evocation  of 
certain  moods  and  feelings  which  it  is  impossible 
to  define, — all  this  one  would  think  would 
disappear  in  the  glare  of  the  footlights,  but 
the  result  is  exactly  the  reverse.  Tchekov's 
plays  are  a  thousand  times  more  interesting  to 
see  on  the  stage  than  they  are  to  read.  A 
thousand  effects  which  the  reader  does  not  sus- 
pect make  themselves  felt  on  the  boards.  The 
reason  of  this  is  that  Tchekov's  plays  realise 
Goethe's  definition  of  what  plays  should  be. 
"  Everything  in  a  play,"  Goethe  said,  "  should  be 
symbolical,  and  should  lead  to  something  else." 
By  symbolical,  of  course,  he  meant  morally  sym- 
bolical,— he  did  not  mean  that  the  play  should  be 
298 


THE  PLAYS  OF  ANTON  TCHEKOV 

full  of  enigmatic  puzzles,  but  that  every  event  in 
it  should  have  a  meaning  and  cast  a  shadow 
larger  than  itself. 

The  atmosphere  of  Tchekov's  plays  is  laden  with 
gloom,  but  it  is  a  darkness  of  the  last  hour  before 
the  dawn  begins.  His  note  is  not  in  the  least  a 
note  of  despair :  it  is  a  note  of  invincible  trust 
in  the  coming  day.  The  burden  of  his  work  is 
this — life  is  difficult,  there  is  nothing  to  be  done 
but  to  work  and  to  continue  to  work  as  cheerfully 
as  one  can  ;  and  his  triumph  as  a  playwright  is 
that  for  the  first  time  he  has  shown  in  prose, — for 
the  great  poets  have  done  little  else, — behind  the 
footlights,  what  it  is  that  makes  life  difficult. 
Life  is  too  tremendous,  too  cheerful,  and  too  sad 
a  thing  to  be  condensed  into  an  abstract  problem 
of  lines  and  alphabetical  symbols  ;  and  those  who 
in  writing  for  the  stage  attempt  to  do  this,  achieve 
a  result  which  is  both  artificial  and  tedious. 
Tchekov  disregarded  all  theories  and  all  rules 
which  people  have  hitherto  laid  down  as  the 
indispensable  qualities  of  stage  writing  ;  he  put  on 
the  stage  the  things  which  interested  him  because 
they  were  human  and  true ;  things  great  or 
infinitesimally  small ;  as  great  as  love  and  as 
small  as  a  discussion  as  to  what  are  the  best  hors 
doeuvres ;  and  they  interest  us  for  the  same 
reason. 


299 


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Morrison  &  Gibb  Limited 

Edinburgh 


